Lachesis' Weavings
by AngelCeleste85
Summary: UPDATE: Ch.11 uploaded, minor revisions of each chapter so far made. Erik finds comfort in little Meg Giry, and eventually finds himself in very nearly the same position he had once placed Christine in! Further chapters upcoming.
1. Time of Decision

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!  
  
Blame: I think this one goes entirely on my shoulders. ;-)  
  
Setting: Right after ALW version.  
  
Spoilers: None yet, or at least none you haven't heard, but it's going to get angsty later. Trust me, you've seen I'm the Queen of Angst (Lady Melpomene, Muse of Tragedy, is the Empress)!  
  
Other notes: This might become multiple chapters. I think it'll be E/C, but I don't know yet. I suspect it *will* become an E/M real soon. Lachesis is one of the Moerae, or the Fates, of Greek myth: she is the one who measures out the thread of life that her sister Clotho spins, and weaves it into a great pattern before her other sister Atropos cuts the thread, thus the title. The phic is more heavily based in the ALW version, but I may drop hints from the Leroux novel throughout. If you're wondering why I'm going through the final scene, mainly it's so that you get an idea of the mental states I'm projecting onto the two of them and on Erik, what I'm working with later.  
  
// denotes Christine's thoughts. //  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 1 - Time of Decision  
  
"You try my patience! Make your choice!"  
  
The look on Erik's face was terrifying, to be sure. Christine forced her knees to remain steady. // There's no other way. this has to be. He's mad, but he's right, I have no choice... I can't condemn us all. //  
  
Her feet felt like lead as she stepped forward, conscious of both mens' eyes on her: her body barely felt like her own. One step after another, she approached the man whom she had unmasked before Paris. // It was cruel of me to do that, but no less cruel than what he is doing now... //  
  
Christine stopped when she was so close to Erik she could feel the heat radiating from his body. His eyes, so very odd... One glowed amber in the shadows of the bare deformity, the other a dark black that glittered with emotions she could not identify though she had seen them before. Never this raw, this intense, though, and yet his eyes were strangely hard and distant. Had they ever really softened even for her? The man behind the mask had let down his guard for her once before, and she had burned him to the bone. Now she had to pay the price for that harm.  
  
// This may yet be harder on him than it is on me... he doesn't know if I'll kiss him or slap him or faint or mock that awful face. Raoul, please understand, this is for both of you: him because he needs it, for you to save your life. So ironic that I should have to save you, when you came down here to save me. But here goes. //  
  
The young opera singer felt her throat tighten as Erik gazed at her. He was a murderer many times over, she knew: the fact that he displayed no remorse for either Buquet or Piangi told her that killing was long habit to him, long enough to deaden any sense of horror at the thought. Even now, behind her, Raoul's life hung in the balance and regardless of her choice, Erik might still decide to kill him. // He won't, I know that, because he is trying to get my love... a strange combination of coercion and pleading. But this is all I can give him. //  
  
She had no idea where the words came from, but she sang, softly at first. "Pitiful creature of darkness... What kind of life have you known?" Erik's eyes lost some of that distant look, boring into her own blue eyes as if he was trying to see her thoughts. Her voice firmed as her decision shored her resolve. "God give me courage to show you... You are not... Alone!"  
  
Even as Erik's eyes registered disbelief she had flung herself to him, flung herself on his mercy. // Forgive me, Raoul, this is the only way that you will leave here alive. Oh, Erik, forgive this last deception: I could never love you when you have extorted my promise of marriage to you by threatening the life of the man I love! // Her lips, unused to contact, fumbled across his chin before finding his own twisted ones: with her arms locked around his shoulders she clearly felt the shock that made him straighten, almost tearing the contact apart. Then Erik tilted her face to his - she could not see him for the tears in her eyes! - and returned the kiss.  
  
She lost herself in the intensity: she had never dreamed such feelings were even possible. What her eyes had been unable to decipher, what his eyes had hidden, every inch of his body telegraphed to her plainly. His original shock gave way to incredulity, then to hope and finally desire so hot it seared her. And just as suddenly, the torrent stopped: she could feel, through the haze of feeling this one kiss had awakened in her, Erik distancing himself. She broke the kiss, blinking away the tears in her eyes to look at Erik.  
  
The cold aloofness had returned. almost. It wasn't firmly in place, she could see something stirring in his eyes. But his arms slipped from where they had clutched possessively around her waist, he stepped back and pushed her away, and the distance in his eyes... she had the sense of finality from them and it frightened her. When she saw the man pick up a candle and move towards Raoul with swift, purposeful steps she nearly screamed in fear.  
  
The scream was arrested before it began, though, when she saw a tiny flame race upwards to the roof of the cavern. The Punjab lasso fell limply to the ground and Raoul put a wondering hand to his throat.  
  
"Come," Erik growled. When Raoul only stood there, the Phantom snatched his hand and nearly dragged him to where Christine stood. But it was gently that he took the hand of the woman he loved and placed it into the hand of the man he hated,  
  
Christine could hear a murmur in the distance, had for several minutes. Now she heard words of hate in the distant roar. It was good that she had not screamed, then.  
  
"Take her - forget me - forget all of this."  
  
// What is he doing? What does he mean? // She knew she was staring at her hand, clasped in Raoul's, both held together in the icy and incredibly strong grip of the Phantom.  
  
Raoul was staring as well. But Erik continued. His face was impassive as the stone walls around them. "Leave me alone, forget all you've seen." His voice was an entirely different story: to an opera singer, the voice of a man who expressed himself almost entirely through music should have held volumes. But Christine was too stunned to hear it clearly, her mind was still fogged by the revelations of that kiss.  
  
A deceptively slender arm pointed imperiously outside. "Take the boat - go now, don't wait!" Erik pushed Raoul's shoulder, snapping the other out of his thoughts. "Just take her and go - before it's too late!"  
  
"What are you talking about?" Christine wanted to ask, but Erik swept her up, carried her outside the little house and deposited her unceremoniously, if as gently as always, in the carved wooden boat. Raoul got in after and Erik handed him the tall pole.  
  
"Go now!" Now Erik's voice was starting to carry open distress. "Go now and leave me!" he screamed before fleeing from her sight.  
  
The Vicomte started to push the boat away from the dock. Suddenly the fog cleared from the young diva's mind. Christine stopped him and got out of the boat.  
  
"Christine, what are you doing?" the young noble asked in a whisper. The mob was definitely coming closer. She ignored him: there was something she knew she had to do.  
  
"Masquerade..."  
  
Erik had turned away and was already crossing the threshold of his house. She ran after him, heedless of the loose, dry rocks that sought to trip her steps or of the Viscount's boots thumping after her. "Paper faces on parade..."  
  
Re-entering the house that she had spent so much time in, she saw him.  
  
Erik stood, his mask in hand, by the fireplace with his back to her. His head rested on the mantelpiece, his shoulders were bowed and shaking. A little tin music box, with a monkey playing the cymbals perched atop it, was playing a bright, tinkling tune... she recognized the box, and the music seemed familiar, but Christine could not quite place it. Oddly, he was singing, though his voice sounded only a hairsbreadth away from shattering entirely. "Masquerade... hide your face so the world will never find you."  
  
"Erik!" she whispered.  
  
At the sound of her voice he spun, his eyes wide and a terrible expression on his face. He made a valiant attempt to straighten his back, but it was belied by the gleaming tracks of tears down each side of his ravaged face.  
  
"What are you doing, you stupid child?! If they find you here they'll kill you as well!" his eyes said without words. Every line of his posture spoke of rigid self-control to Christine, he wanted nothing more than to run to her and crush her to his chest and yet restrained himself. In other circumstances it might have been funny, except...  
  
She walked across to the maskless man and held out her open hand. Erik sighed when he saw the slim golden band set with three small diamonds resting in her palm, but he held out his own hand and she tipped the ring into it. Christine didn't dare to look at him, only turned and walked away.  
  
"Christine... I love you..."  
  
// I know, Erik. I understand... I hope that you understand as well. // She didn't turn around, afraid of what she would see if she did.  
  
Stepping outside, she nearly walked right into Raoul, who snatched her hand and ran back to the boat. It was either run with him or be dragged and Christine knew the mob could not be far away. In this situation, there was no place for dignity: she pulled up the full, heavy skirts of the white silk wedding dress and ran, not stopping to pick up the veil when it fell.  
  
Again they got into the boat. Raoul was no waterman, but he had re-tied the boat at the little dock with a running bowline: one quick jerk sufficed to free the boat and Raoul snatched the pole. It was a sleek craft, narrow in the beam and not deep, much like the gondolas of the Venetian canals, and it did not take much effort for the little canoe to pick up speed.  
  
Christine heard a woman singing somewhere. "Say you'll share with me one love... one lifetime..." It seemed close. "Say the word, and I will follow you..."  
  
Raoul's voice, somewhat labored from the poling, answered. "Share each day with me..."  
  
It was her own voice that answered! "Each night..." and then Raoul joined - she'd never dreamed he could sing as well! - "...each morning..."  
  
And then one very familiar voice joined them from afar. Christine turned to see the Phantom of the Opera standing in the doorway, a silhouette against the lights inside. A strong rejoinder, and yet Christine had never heard his voice come so close to breaking before.  
  
"You alone can make my song take flight! It's over now... the music of the night!"  
  
Christine could see the red light of torches approaching the little house on the lake now, heard their roar of recognition... and then Raoul poled the boat around a rocky projection in the lake.  
  
"I hope he'll get away safely," she whispered.  
  
The nobleman scoffed. "What difference does it make if he gets out of here? I told you, he will haunt us until we're dead, so long as he lives!"  
  
"Raoul..."  
  
"Enough of this, where's the exit?"  
  
Christine pointed to the next promontory. "There's a ring on that rock, if you tie the boat there we can both jump to the rock and there's a little path - he showed it to me, but said he doesn't use it much, no need, it was a workers' path in constructing this place. It leads to the Rue Scribe entrance. If we hurry we can get there before the gendarmes post guards all over it."  
  
"With luck my carriage will still be out front." The boat bumped against the rock. Raoul jumped out and slipped on the wet rocks: an oath passed his lips before he could call it back, but he turned and extended his hand to help Christine from the boat.  
  
To his astonishment, she was already out and kneeling on the bank, the pole at a steep angle in her hands. "Now what are you doing?" Raoul asked, exasperated.  
  
Christine replied calmly, without looking at him. "Can't you see the glow over there? That's the mob. Can't you hear them yelling? They haven't found him. But they'll search the lake soon and if they find this boat, they'll think that he came this way. I can't send it out to the middle of the lake, he might need it later. But if you'll help me, there's a little hollow here, it's small, but it'll shield the boat from prying eyes and he'll know where to find it."  
  
"Good God, Christine..." Raoul muttered under his breath, but he got back into the boat with the pole and helped her turn the craft into the covered hole that must have somehow been excavated from the rock just for this boat. One push with the pole from the bank against the rear seat was enough to send the craft, now empty, deep into its niche. Raoul knelt over the hole and laid the pole into the little canoe. "Come on, let's go."  
  
They did not run, now that the immediate dangers were past, nor did they speak. They only held hands, alert to any sound of pursuit from behind or of a watch set up ahead. Even in the tunnel leading to the Rue Scribe, it was silent.  
  
"Christine, why did you go back to him?"  
  
"Wouldn't you have wanted me to, in his place?"  
  
"I suppose..."  
  
"And I had to return his ring."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I had to return his ring. He gave me a ring, Raoul, a wedding ring. He really wanted to marry me. I can't imagine why he pushed me away but I won't argue, I don't love him. But I had to return the ring, I couldn't keep it and not marry him. And I couldn't keep it, anyway."  
  
Raoul smiled and stopped, brought Christine to himself, buried his face in her long black curls. "I swear to you, Christine, I'm not losing you again." Christine laughed a little. But laughter turned quiet and with a start, Raoul noticed she was crying into his shoulder. "Darling? Darling, what is it? What's wrong?"  
  
"I nearly lost you," she whispered back.  
  
At somewhat of a loss as to what to do, Raoul held her close and rocked her. That had not been pleasant, the irony or the fact that his life had literally been on the line not an hour before. But he couldn't blame her for breaking down now, it was amazing she'd held out this long. He would cry later, out of her sight. "You won't lose me, dear."  
  
"Promise?" The tears had stopped and her voice was steadier.  
  
"On my honor and my family's honor, I swear it. No Chagny has ever broken his word, not once in six hundred years, and I'll be damned if I'm the first." He knelt before her in the tunnel. "I know we were only playing at engagement before. Now, I'm serious," he added as her eyes widened. "Christine, will you marry me?"  
  
Christine's eyes flooded anew, but through it her smile lit up her face. "I would be honored, Raoul... Yes, I will."  
  
Later, the soft creaking of the carriage, the driver's encouraging and gentle chirrups to the horses, the soft clop-clop-clop of steel-shod hooves on cobblestones were the only sounds to disturb her reverie. She lay with her head pillowed on Raoul's strong shoulder, his arms encircling her tightly. By his breathing he was asleep, lulled by the rocking carriage, and she nearly so. The moon shone through the window from the left side onto her face and she smiled. A dark shadow of a night-bird crossed the white disk and as it did, it seemed to her that she could hear the ghost of the Phantom's voice, stealing through the depths of her mind, singing "This is the point of no return..."  
  
// I am so sorry... Take care of yourself. //  
  
A few moments later, she too gave herself up to sleep as the carriage bore them both north.  
  
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Please, tell me your opinions, I value them highly!  
  
AngelCeleste85 


	2. Into the Broken Looking Glass

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!  
  
Blame: I think this one goes entirely on my shoulders. ;-)  
  
Setting: Right after ALW version.  
  
Other notes: This might become multiple chapters. I think it'll be E/C, but I don't know yet. I suspect it *will* become an E/M real soon. I do know precisely where I intend for this to go, but one of my muses might have another idea entirely. If you're not sure who M is, read on.  
  
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts }}  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings  
  
by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 2: Into the Broken Looking-Glass  
  
It wasn't easy to put one over on old Madame Giry, but as she slipped away from the end of the rehearsal Meg felt pretty sure she'd managed it. Behind her, her mother's voice barked orders at the girls who had not rehearsed their moves well enough to suit her as the remainder of the corps sighed in relief. Madame Giry had a formidable temper, there was no getting around it, and there was not a girl or boy among the petite rats but breathed a sigh of relief that the ballet teacher's temper was not coming down on their heads. All of them had been victims of her sharp tongue and, though rare and it took a great deal to bring it into use, her cane as well.  
  
Meg pulled her dark gray shawl, threadbare but serviceable, tighter around her head to hide her golden hair and around her shoulders to try to ward off some of the chill. The fact that she hadn't changed out of her practice tutu wasn't helping at all, the flesh-colored tights were not intended to keep her warm. Though the furnaces in the Opera House were powerful, they hadn't run in weeks and most of their heat was piped up to the auditorium when they had been. Of course, that was from fear of the Phantom of the Opera as well.  
  
But nothing had been heard or found of him for two weeks!  
  
Like it or not, life as usual continued at the Opera House though the mob that had gone to hunt for the Phantom of the Opera had wound up looting anything of value that wasn't nailed down instead and much of the fine art was badly damaged. Yet rehearsals continued, though repairs were slow in starting. Carlotta had resumed her old place as the company's prima donna and anyone she even suspected of remembering her utter humiliation at the hands of the Phantom those months ago bore the brunt of the tyrannical diva's wrath.  
  
She slipped down the long hallway to Christine's old dressing room - the door had been inexpertly nailed shut for two weeks since the mob had come back empty-handed. Meg herself had been there in the Phantom's own home with them, though not willingly, she had feared that harm might come to Christine. But they had found no trace of either Christine or the Phantom. Nor had the Vicomte de Chagny been found, either.  
  
No, not quite true. The mob hadn't found anything of any of the three missing persons, that was true. But Meg personally treasured the silver- white porcelain half-mask she had found and kept secret.  
  
The light from the connecting corridor barely penetrated this far. For a moment she stopped and bent down low to a place where a large, deep hole had been gouged in the wall. No ornate wooden paneling with marble floors and ceiling molding here: only thin plank walls covered with a bit of paint over the plaster. Behind the walls were layers of insulation, but it was cold enough down here to make Meg suspect that the four-legged rats had managed to eat most of that. She could hear them skittering away from her hand and shuddered when he hand brushed something that squeaked and vanished. Quickly she found the iron lantern she had left behind on her arrival here this morning, and the matches. A stink of sulphur accompanied the quick flare and only a moment sufficed to touch the flame to the fresh, kerosene-soaked wick.  
  
It had been the old stagehand Buquet who had told her that nothing kept one's night vision in the dark like a lamp that was covered so that it only shone red light. He had said, when she asked why he was carrying a lamp like that among the scenes below, that white light was the worst thing a body could do to their sight when they needed to be in the dark and able to see without being seen. He hadn't seemed aware of the pun, though.  
  
The quick patter of the dancer's little feet echoed in a muffled way down the hall.  
  
Christine had admitted to her, in a tear-filled moment in secret that her "Angel of Music" was only a man. It hadn't been difficult to connect the dots: this mysterious man with the voice of an angel and the face of a demon could be none other than the Opera Ghost: surely two men could not have escaped notice for so long down there!  
  
Two weeks and nothing had been so much as smelled of the Phantom of the Opera, not even by the gendarmes who, until this morning, had watched constantly over the cavern they knew had to house the Phantom somewhere. The commissioner had only ended his inquest that morning and pulled the police off of their unceasing watch only then, much to the dismay of Firmin and Andre. For fourteen days the place had been as silent as a mausoleum and, to Meg, it felt as desolate.  
  
Little Meg prayed under her breath, as she bent back the nails holding the door shut, that it wasn't indeed his tomb she was going to.  
  
"Strange," the dancer murmured to herself as she hurried down the corridor, the low glare of the red lamp casting eerie, bloody-looking shadows on the walls and doors she passed. "This place feels more haunted now than when we had an Opera Ghost around." It was entirely possible, she knew, that the reason for that was because the so-called "ghost" was a real one now. She had spoken only to break the heavy, oppressive silence, but it seemed that her words were flung back at her as if by a soundproof wall, as if her words were even more intrusive and un-natural to this once-busy corridor than this lurking silence.  
  
She had figured out how to jury-rig an entrance into Christine's room that didn't give away the fact that it had been re-opened too obviously, under her breath she thanked and blessed the old stagehand Joseph Buquet for his lessons to her in stagecraft. All it really needed was a few nails bent just a little bit and for that she carried a small hammer concealed in her cloak pocket. Christine had long ago given her a spare key, saying that if she needed to stay the night in her room she was more than welcome to. Now she slipped the key into the door, opened it and stepped in.  
  
The room was even colder than the hallway had been and she pulled her cloak still tighter. Not that it did much good. The eerie, flickering shadows reflected off the vanity mirror, and off of the fragments of the mirrored doorway. Meg could remember when she had never suspected how Christine vanished with her "Angel," she hadn't believed it until Carlotta had smashed the mirror with a chair. The shock of the pitch-dark passage behind the mirror had lasted only long enough for a few rifle butts to break open a jagged hole large enough for them to pass two abreast, as wide as the secret passage would accommodate.  
  
The ghosts of the past did seem to haunt this room and Meg shivered, pulling herself back to the present. Shoes were her first concern, the ballet slippers she carried, tied to a little loop on her skirt, would not be any protection at all from the glass shards that glinted in the red light like they already tasted her blood. Christine had worn about the same size shoes as Meg did and Meg had come down here counting on finding an old pair that Christine hadn't forgotten. She knew for a fact that the room hadn't been touched beyond the mirror: everyone was still walking too gingerly for fear that the Opera Ghost was still around, though it seemed he was no longer.  
  
"After all," the Commissioner had said, "he's only human. He's got to eat sometime, and drink. None of my men has ever seen or heard him come out for water, and nobody's smelled or heard him eating. I tell you, messieurs, he died weeks ago."  
  
Of course, nobody had wanted to go in and find out where the body was, even to give it a decent burial.  
  
{{ Standing here isn't going to get you in there, Megan Giry, }} she scolded herself and rummaged through the closet quickly. There was one of Christine's dresses: surely the Vicomte would buy her new ones so she wouldn't have to worry about wearing her faded cotton gowns, years out of style, anymore. She stripped quickly, shivering anew at the thought that maybe *he* was there, watching her through the shattered remains of the mirror... {{ It's your imagination, Giry. }} She still changed into Christine's dress, a light, dingy gray that might have been sky-blue once. It was a trifle too snug across the hips and the bodice was a little too loose, but it was a deal warmer than her skimpy ballerina's costume.  
  
{{ Besides, he's a grown man, and I can't very well show up on his doorstep alone and dressed like that, God only knows what he'd do! }}  
  
But Meg didn't believe it. Everything Christine had told her about him made her feel that he was a perfect gentleman. "I feel his presence when I'm in my dressing-room, Meg," she'd said, her cheeks stained with pink, " but if I so much as twist my arm behind my back to get the buttons he vanishes."  
  
With difficulty Meg fastened up the last button and pulled on a pair of Christine's stouter shoes. Checking the lamp - it would not do to let that go out, down there in the lightless labyrinth of the Opera House cellars! - she took a deep breath, made the sign of the cross, squared her shoulders, and walked through the broken looking-glass.  
  
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Please let me know how you're enjoying this so far!  
  
AngelCeleste85 


	3. Beneath the Opera House

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!  
  
Blame: I think this one goes entirely on my shoulders. ;-)  
  
Setting: Right after ALW version.  
  
Spoilers and other notes: This definitely is multiple chapters. I'm not saying another word.  
  
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts. }}  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 3 - Beneath the Opera House  
  
Stepping into through the mirror and into the tunnel that had brought her to this point, Meg later reflected, might possibly have been the bravest thing she ever did in her whole life up to that point: that, or the most foolhardy.  
  
At the same time, she conceded that it didn't hold a candle to what followed.  
  
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It was as though she had been cast into the outer darkness: a slow, icy breeze stirred the long skirts around her ankles and her teeth chattered. She could hear glass shards crunching beneath the soles of her shoes. With the yellow flame of the lamp masked behind red glass, she could barely see anything beyond a ten-foot radius, but she remembered Buquet's words.  
  
"You see more like this. I don't know why, Mademoiselle, but you do. White light, it glares into your eyes 'til you'd trip over your own feet much less the backstage, blinds you every time. The longer you keep it, the more you'll get used to it." She murmured the words as her memory played them back for her: he had been somewhat dull-witted, but quick enough to know most of what there was to know about stagecraft.  
  
Trailing a hand against the wall helped calm her a little and gave her some idea of the serpentine nature of the passage. It was so dark, she could not help but feel claustrophobic, and she could barely keep track of the twists and turns. She had long since lost track of the time. Glass still seemed to crunch underfoot once in a while, but not at every step anymore and it didn't sound the way glass usually did: she bit back a scream when she happened to glance down right after the crunch had sounded again and found her slender foot in the middle of a rat's crushed skeleton: after that, the little dance was sure to watch the floor as assiduously as the walls. The only other sounds were the hardened soles of her borrowed shoes slapping the cold black stone smoothly, and the scratching and occasional chittering of rats that fled her approach. Frequently she disturbed some orb-weaver's web, several times their dislodged occupants landed on her shoulders or in her hair. More often, the spider-silk was old and thick with dust and damp, with the crumpled body of its once-owner somewhere in it. It added to her fear that the Opera House had become a tomb for the infamous O.G. Surely if he was alive he would have used the subterranean passages often enough to clear the cobwebs out.  
  
{{ Yes, they turned left here and it was the wrong way. }} Meg recalled as she swept around a bend and found a t-intersection illuminated, faint and dull, in her angry red lamplight. {{ So they backtracked, and took the right fork, and that led them to the rock with the metal ring they couldn't get out.and that's the edge of the lake. and there's a narrow path on a ledge over it at the left end of the lake. }} Confident now that she had regained her bearings, Meg hurried down the right fork. {{ Sweet Mary, don't let me get lost now. dear Saint Christopher, help this traveler find her way! }}  
  
It took longer than she remembered, for then she had been at the tail end of an angry mob with bright torches, but the myriad twists and turns did not lead her astray, for suddenly the scent of damp that had been growing became much stronger in her nose. She stopped just shy of soaking her feet, socks, stockings, tights and skirt in the icy waters of the lake and looked out. The far side of the lake, where she had found the Opera Ghost's mask, was his home but it was out of sight, beyond the power of her dark lamp to reach.  
  
"Now," she muttered, determined not to let her fear of this place or the man she hoped still occupied it overcome her resolution to find him. "I've come this far. Where's that ledge?"  
  
Clambering in even a thin cotton skirt over rough, damp rocks is no easy matter, and in shoes with hard, inflexible wooden soles makes it that much more difficult. Meg was agile, but also trying to keep as quiet as possible in case the dreaded Phantom actually was still around, and the hot lantern in her hand made moving very difficult indeed.  
  
Meg counted it a triumph as the narrow ledge, barely wide enough for her to inch along on even on her toes, came into view a good quarter of an hour later. It wasn't so much a ledge as a groove, obviously cut by hand into the inner casing of the cellar, just high enough and deep enough to permit a booted foot some purchase. To Meg's surprise and delight, when she got closer she saw another, narrower groove set much higher and running parallel: a handhold. This, then, was the flywalk.  
  
She found herself in an interesting predicament just then. She had made it safely to the flywalk, but obviously navigating this took some skill and the use of all four limbs. She would have difficulty taking the lamp with her, yet she could not leave it behind. The metal was hot: she winced, but there was nothing else for it.  
  
Meg got up as close as possible to the flywalk and set her right foot and left on it. A simple granny knot sufficed to knot the shawl over her shoulders with a fair amount of tail hanging off the knot's ends. The lantern handle, she wrapped in one of these tails and gripped between her teeth before continuing.  
  
The lamp wasn't as hot as she had expected, the shawl damped that a bit, but it was still warmer than she liked. She refused to look down at it or at the lake below her as she inched out. it was a long way to cross like this, barely hanging onto the wall.  
  
{{ Oh God, don't let me fall, don't let me fall, I can't swim. }} In that moment, Meg Giry knew she was in more danger from her own action than from anything the Phantom of the Opera could do: she had not seen or heard any sign that he was alive this whole time. {{ Stop it, you big baby. You're willing to go alone to see if the Opera Ghost is alive or dead for true, and you're afraid of a bit of acrobatics? You've done worse trying to walk on the balcony railing at home and succeeded! One foot, now the other, one hand, now the other, just slide them in the grooves, that's it, foot, foot, hand, hand, foot-foot, hand-hand. good girl Giry! }} It became a litany in her head: foot-foot, hand-hand, navigating almost solely by touch, and suddenly she found herself back on solid ground.  
  
The lantern was definitely too warm now and her shawl was starting to smoke, but she could not soak the singed corner in the lake because it would drip icewater down her front. Quickly she spat into it, or tried to, and found her mouth was too dry for it.  
  
She looked over the span she had crossed. suddenly it seemed like she had crossed the entire Atlantic Ocean like that and her knees went weak. She laughed softly. Kneeling at the side of the lake, she supped a mouthful of water to her lips and drank, then another and spat that onto the scorched section of the shawl.  
  
"At least it's dark gray, it won't show easily." She had to talk now, so she didn't scare the Opera Ghost if he was around. {{ Of course he's around, you silly goose. He knows everything that goes on in this place. He probably watched you crossing that flywalk and laughed. }} The thought was not the most comforting, but Meg preferred to think that the reason for her continuing to find a complete lack of evidence of life was that nobody found the Opera Ghost, or heard anything from him, unless he wanted to be found.  
  
{{ What am I doing here? If he wanted me to find him he'd have made it clear by now, I don't even know where to look. He probably isn't home. Either that or he's pulling another hiatus like that six-month silence right up to the New Years' Masquerade. }} And yet, something inside Meg told her no, that she had to continue. There was a nagging sense inside her that grew stronger by the moment, had nagged her from the moment she'd heard that Christine, the Vicomte and the Phantom all had disappeared on the same night, and it said that not all was well.  
  
Picking up the lantern once more she cast around quickly. Dim though the light was, it reflected off of the water by her side and off of the silver- gray casing. The dim rust light revealed nothing out of the ordinary. except for she knew what she would find.  
  
There it was: a dark, gaping hole in the casing: Meg made her way towards it, keeping up a quiet stream of monologue that was intended to soothe her as much as any possible audience. That was the door to the Phantom's home. Meg didn't like to think of it as a lair, Christine had gone to great pains to make her understand that the Phantom was not just an animal like everyone seemed to think. No, not "the Phantom," or the "Opera Ghost," and not even the "Angel of Music." She'd named him. Erik. Erik's home, then. Though it had been out of range of her little red lamp, the gendarmes had brought the powerful spotlights down from the auditorium and trained them on the door in order to keep their unceasing vigil.  
  
Or rather, they'd watched what remained of the door. The mob had wrenched away by brute force the clever concealing and rifles, axes and torches had destroyed the lovely oak door that had stood behind it. Looking at the charred, splintered heap of what remained, she couldn't find any of the brass fastenings so she knocked on the gouged, twisted doorframe instead.  
  
"Is there anyone home?" The performer's voice quavered a little.  
  
No answer.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
Silence. And yet she had the feeling she was not alone.  
  
"All right, I did knock, but I'm coming in now whether you want me to or not, I hope you won't think me too rude, Monsieur. Monsieur Erik, isn't it? Christine said a lot of good things about you, when she said anything at all that I could understand." Meg knew she was rambling but she couldn't help it as she made her way into the damp and filthy interior. "Oh, my God."  
  
The mob had trashed this once-elegant room, she knew, though she had left before they were satisfied. The lovely wood paneling on the walls, stripped. Anything valuable had been looted. The fireplace had rivers of wet ashes flowing from it and it brought tears to Meg's eye to remember Carlotta and the managers so gleefully burning all of those pages and pages of music that they had found. including the original score of "Don Juan Triumphant," which had vanished as mysteriously as the "ghost's" salary from the managers' office. The furor that had caused with Firmin in particular, yet it hadn't touched on the note that was left in its place. The man had literally jumped up and down, tearing out handfuls of hair!  
  
It had been terrible, watching the managers and the diva prancing around in the torches' red light like demons from Hell, shredding this masterwork to confetti before starting a fire from the pieces right in the middle of the bared hardwood floor - of course the fine Persian rugs had been looted.  
  
She could never have admitted it to anyone but herself, not even to Madame Giry, but Meg had rather liked it. She'd seen right off what it really was: Aminta was Christine's portrait, idealized and romanticized in music and words but still clearly Christine and just as plainly written specifically and only for her voice.  
  
The thought struck her then. The Phantom had killed Piangi, in order to go up there and sing with Christine. Had the character of Don Juan himself been a self-portrait of Erik?  
  
That cleared up quite a few things, and raised almost as many more questions.  
  
She regretted not being able to save any of the destroyed music for him. Obviously he had spent years writing such a collection and she'd glimpsed a few of the pages: what she had seen was all astounding work. How long had "Don Juan" on its own taken him?  
  
{{ I don't know what I did with my copy of the "Don Juan" score, maybe it's somewhere in my dressing room. I hope Jammes hasn't gone snooping and found it, or Maman. Or Sorelli, the ugly camel. But maybe Christine's is still in her room there. I'll have to look. It's worth saving. }}  
  
All of this went through her mind as she searched: first the living room, then the kitchen, then back through the living room to that terrible room, Erik's inner sanctum. with the twisted, mangled heap of what had once been an organ and the dented metal coffin. She even checked inside the coffin, on the off-chance that. But no, Erik was nowhere to be found. It was clear that he had not made any effort at all to clean this place up: the ever- present spider-webs of the tunnels had made their homes here as well.  
  
Dejected and yet relieved, Meg went out again into the living room and sank down into the massive black throne. It wasn't a comfortable chair for her at all, being much too large for her to set her feet on the floor or to sit all the way into it and absolutely devoid of cushioning of any kind, and badly scored and damaged from the petty fury of the mob: it had to be either metal or else some incredibly hard wood. But she curled up in it and rested her head on the arm, pillowed atop her own folded arms. This was where she had found the mask and tucked it hurriedly into her bodice. Everyone else had been so busy with valuables to plunder that nobody had seen what Meg tucked away: none of them had imagined that the "Opera Ghost" lived in such comfort beneath them until they actually saw it!  
  
Something, a knot in the silky wood on the arm of the chair fascinated Meg and idly she toyed with it. Suddenly she felt something snap in the seat beneath her. Intrigued, she fiddled with the spot again and quickly felt the same thing. There was no mistaking it: there was a latch there that she had triggered. Meg wondered if maybe some of his wondrous music had escaped the destruction by his placing it in there. But how to open the compartment? She clambered out of the seat and tried it again.  
  
The seat rose up, pivoting somehow on hidden hinges in the back of the chair. Looking in, Meg screamed, a sound that was strangled off in her throat almost as soon as it emerged, making it sound a croak.  
  
It wasn't sheets of musical compositions at rest in the compartment revealed. It was the composer himself.  
  
And he didn't look like he was alive.  
  
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Please let me know how you're enjoying this so far!  
  
AngelCeleste85  
  
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	4. A Spark of Life

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own "PTO." I never have, and never will, own Erik, Raoul, Christine, or any of the other characters that appear in other authors' versions of the story of the Phantom of the Opera (no matter how much I wish I did). The only things I can make any claim to are the workings of my own imagination with the material that other artists have given to me in their music and their stories, and the occasional incidental characters that truly *are* mine. Therefore I am not making any money off of this in any way, shape or form!  
  
Blame: I think this one goes entirely on my shoulders. ;-)  
  
Setting: Right after ALW version.  
  
Other notes: Don't worry about the swearwords in here, most of them are rather archaic anyway and we wouldn't have a second thought about them, but in those days they were quite powerful oaths. Meg can get away with saying these because she's a petite rat, a dancer in the ballet corps, and would have picked up some rather foul oaths in the course of her career in the corps. She only uses them though, when she's alone or thinks she's alone, can you imagine Madame Giry letting "God's bones" (one of the worst) slide unremarked?  
  
{{ denotes Meg's thoughts. }}  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 4 - A Spark of Life  
  
To Meg's credit, she didn't scream this time. She gasped, and backed away several steps.  
  
"Oh my God." She reached a trembling hand into the space where the body of the man who called himself the Opera Ghost lay, curled into a fetal position in the bottom of the chair. Nothing jumped up and bit her as she half-expected. {{ Of course not, you goose, this is reality, not another opera! Dead men don't jump to life in reality. }}  
  
Meg looked at him, tears welling in her eyes. This obviously was where he had hidden himself away from the mob weeks ago, had he even moved since?  
  
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, I tried to get here before now, but I couldn't."  
  
She knelt down and it was with a trembling hand that she stroked his hair. It was fine and soft, if what was left of it was almost completely gray: he didn't feel like someone who had lain dead for two weeks undisturbed. For that matter. he didn't smell like it, either. {{ Not that he smells like lilacs anyway but - }}  
  
Meg's brow furrowed in thought.  
  
{{ Could it be? }} She didn't dare to finish that thought.  
  
Obviously the man had not been taking care of himself recently, his hair was matted horribly and heavy with dirt and oil to the point where Meg was not sure of its true color or length. He wore black pants and a plain white shirt, worn and wrinkled badly, neither very clean but serviceable, apparently not his best formal attire like that which her mother had always seen. His skin was not much paler than the wrinkled cotton and paper-dry to her touch, especially where thick salt trails marked the tracks of tears. The awful thing was how shrunken he seemed. Once his presence, just his aura, had pervaded every niche and nook of the Opera House from the lowest cellar to Apollo's lyre: it was a stark contrast to this bundle of too-thin limbs and too-tight skin, a shrivelled husk that once was a man and was now just a corpse with a weak pulse and a slow, shallow breath, that lay on its side in the darkest corner possible.  
  
It was then that Meg noticed the faintest movement of breathing.  
  
"No way," she whispered, making the sign of the cross once again. She checked his pulse at the throat gingerly: weak, erratic, but there was one. A spark of life remained in him, dying though he had to be. "My God! He's still alive, somehow!"  
  
Meg ran outside, fumbling at the knot of her shawl as she went. When she reached the lake, she plunged the fabric in and carried the whole sopping thing back into the house, not caring that the icy water got all over her borrowed dress as well as what was left of the scorched and water-warped flooring. The man needed water, and needed it fast.  
  
He was so light and emaciated that it was almost no effort at all for Meg to drag the man to a sitting position. She wiped his lips. Thin and almost as pale as the rest of his face, with a wet corner of the shawl and then his cheeks and forehead. Her trembling hand shook even harder as she touched the ravaged left side, but for all the reaction she got he might as well have been stone, or dead.  
  
{{ I've got to get him out of here somehow. But how, and where? }}  
  
Christine had told her about the room Erik had readied for her: the eggshell-white walls and the boat-shaped bed, the rich wooden furniture filled with lovely clothes that were all precisely her size, the baskets of flowers everywhere, especially red roses, and every basket obviously arranged carefully to carry special meanings though most she could not begin to decipher. The mob had never found it, or the concealed entrance to it, but Christine had told her everything about the room. It was one of those things that two girls close to one another talked about: Meg had thought it incredibly romantic.  
  
{{ If I can find it, it'll serve a different purpose now. He's got to get better somewhere, I can't very well haul him up to the Opera House! Now where did she say to find the knob to that dadratted door? }} Between taps on the panel she was certain her friend had meant, she risked glances over her shoulder at the motionless figure in the bottom of the black throne behind her. {{ I don't care how many people he killed, I can't just leave him to die. I had to come and be sure, and leaving him now means I'm a murderess too. Oh, where in blazes is this door - there! }} Meg was much fiercer in the privacy of her own mind when agitated than she thought she would ever be out loud: Madame Giry was death on girls using that kind of language.  
  
Soundlessly the hidden door slid open to reveal a pitch-dark room. The air inside felt dry and slightly warmer than the rest of the house, and if a little bit stale it smelled like lavender instead of rot and mildew and wet ashes and soot. Meg pulled a splinter off of one of the wooden wall panels and raised her dark lamp: almost instantly she caught the red glint of light off of a wall sconce. {{ And right next to the doorway, too, what luck! }} She unhooded the lamp, letting white light glare into both rooms, and set it on the night-table it revealed. Going back to the lamp she'd found, she turned the little stub that she thought would raise the wick, and unaccountably the whole room flooded with light!  
  
"Oh, my," the dazzled young lady, half-blinded, whispered. "How did he do that, I wonder?" Her sight was already returning, though, and she shook off awe to turn the other knobs on the three other lights the first had finally discovered. "At the very least you made it a lot easier for me," she said briskly to the still figure in the chair when she came out. She eased his left arm over the back of her neck and put her own right around his shoulders and under his other arm.  
  
"Monsieur, I don't know when the last time you ate was, but you're skin and bones and you still feel like an elephant hanging off my back," Meg grumbled good-naturedly. Half-carrying, half dragging the unresponsive man into the bedroom she pushed him rather unceremoniously onto the bed that had to have been Christine's. Another trip out sufficed to get the shawl, still very wet, which she reapplied to his face and hands.  
  
"Honestly, I don't know how I got into this predicament, Monsieur," she said, pulling up a chair beside the bed. "Really I don't. I came down because I was worried about you, and expected the Opera Ghost to either be dead or moved out. Instead I find a sick man and I have no idea where to even start nursing you. I don't have time for that, either, Maman will kill me if I'm late for any more rehearsals!" She wrung another corner of the shawl out onto his parched lips, and paused in her monologue as his lips parted on their own to let the precious liquid pass. "Better. My God, you must be thirsty. Hungry, too, I'd bet. I don't have any food, but there's a lake full of water right outside, you know. I'll be right back, there's got to be a cup in there somewhere in that mess of a kitchen that they left behind. Don't go anywhere," she chided the limp man.  
  
To her amazement, there was a metal cup, badly dented but sound enough to carry some water, and a badly chipped ceramic bowl as well. A careful search even turned up a silver spoon, tarnished green with the damp. All three were filthy, but they were all she had. {{ Maybe there's some soap to wash these off with in Christine's room? }} In short order she'd found everything she was looking for, returned all of the newfound utensils to a semi-clean state and was spooning water into the Phantom's mouth.  
  
"Oh, good grief," Meg exclaimed suddenly, dropping the spoon to clap both hands to her rapidly reddening cheeks. "I'm going to have to bathe you and I have no idea how to manage that without. oh, God's bones." It was funny enough that she had to sit back and laugh. "And if I don't close that door, we're both going to freeze, so I'll be back in just a moment." She closed the door, noticing for the first time the heavy bolts on the inside. {{ Bolts? Inside? Christine didn't tell me about that. What kind of man is he, anyway? }}  
  
"Those bolts are going to have to go," she murmured. "I can't be here all day, every day, but I expect to be able to get in here to take care of you when I do! Jeez, if you went over that flywalk any time you wanted to come out and haunt us, you're braver than I thought. So is Christine, if you made her do that, too!"  
  
Meg sighed and continued giving him water little by little. Maybe it was just her imagination, but he did seem to look a little better - not that any amount of water would help his face, she realized sadly - and she fancied his breath and pulse were a little stronger.  
  
"I'm too tired to go back up there now, I just got out of rehearsal and you know how Maman drives us like slaves. And I can't leave you right now in any case. If you need anything, even the next room wouldn't be close enough for me to hear you and anyway, it looks like you can't speak right now. God, this is embarrassing," she added in an undertone to the ceiling, "but I guess I'm going to have to stay in here with you tonight. Mother will have my hide, she always does if I decide not to go home with her at night, but I'm old enough not to, now, and I'm a ballet dancer: everyone expects that kind of thing from the petite rats." So Meg unfolded the shawl to air-dry in a corner, turned all the lamps almost all the way down, and put out the flame in the dark lamp before sitting down again in her chair. Settling her head on her arms and her folded arms on the bed at the sick man's side, she went to sleep.  
  
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Well? Does it suck, does it rock? I know it's a little slow in getting going, that's why I posted three chapters at once, and this one now, but tell me what you think! Don't worry, you'll hear from Christine again soon. I hope I get to hear from *you* sooner, though!  
  
AngelCeleste 


	5. Twisted Every Way

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer, Blame and Setting: Same as before. I'm not making any money off of this, Melpomene hasn't made her signature appearance yet (though she's thinking about it), all the blame so far is mine, this whole thing is right after the ALW version but don't be surprised to find Leroux details in here as well, I keep them straight well enough in my own mind but like to mix them. Ah. Victorian-era swearwords lightly pepper the story but I don't think there's many here.  
  
Other notes: To everyone who has so far read and reviewed, thank you very much for your comments! They're just the encouragement I need to continue with this since this is not going to be an easy one for me to write.  
  
To Bubonic Woodchuck: I'm not much of a fan of E/M either, but that's how this one has to work in order for it to fall out right. I'm still not certain of how it'll end, but I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.  
  
Don't worry about Christine, you'll hear from her soon enough. I'm not saying a word more.  
  
[[ Erik's thoughts ]] {{ Meg's thoughts }}  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 5 - Twisted Every Way  
  
Erik became aware of a very soft, dim glow of red. [[ So I'm going to Hell at last. A fallen angel in hell. There's something rather appropriate about that. ]] He waited, but the dim light didn't seem to get any stronger. [[ How very kind they are, to leave a light on for me. ]]  
  
It was then that Erik became aware of a dull hunger, and a thirst that was growing stronger every moment. The dead weren't hungry or thirsty, were they? There could only be one explanation.  
  
He was still alive. Memory crashed home, and with it an overwhelming grief.  
  
[[ Damn it all anyway! ]] Tears would have trickled down his cheeks, but his body hadn't the moisture for it yet. [[ I remember everything. oh God, why did You not let me die? ]] Perhaps it was a measure of his despair that Erik called on a being he had no belief in. For some time he cried, his body wracked with dry, silent sobs.  
  
Eventually he regained some control over his raw nerves. [[ If I'm alive, I'm somewhere. Where? ]] Erik didn't seem to be able to open his eyelids, they felt like lead weights. With his other senses he explored the room.  
  
He lay on something warm and soft - [[ I'm not in the chair? How did I get here? ]] - and the scent of lavender was strong in the air. It made him wince under the weight of too many bittersweet memories. The room was silent, except for breathing: two different breathers. One was raspy and dry, too quick and too shallow to be healthy, laboring for every breath. In surprise he realized that was his own breathing. [[ Damn, what did I do to myself? ]]  
  
The other one was steady and regular, slow but deep: he could feel that warm breath on his cold hand, where a weight seemed to be pulling that soft surface he was resting on downward. All the pieces fit together suddenly. [[Christi- No! It can't be! I won't let her! ]]  
  
Erik forced his eyes open, started to straighten himself up. and fell back with a great sigh, eyes closed again and exhausted from the effort. He knew where he was now, and who slept beside him. Christine had never had quite that shade of hair even when she wore wigs for various roles, and her raven tresses had always been in slightly better condition than the golden curls that tumbled about the face that was turned toward him.  
  
There was a gasp and the sound of fabric rusting as the weight on that side of the bed vanished.  
  
"Monsieur?" Shit, he'd woken her. As if the face was not all the identification he needed for her, the girl's trembling voice named her.  
  
"Little Meg," he croaked out. Not the proper form of address, he knew, but he was much too tired for anything else. [[ I sound worse than Carlotta. ]] "What are you doing here?"  
  
"I'm here to help."  
  
"Don't bother," the man rasped. "Nobody can help me now."  
  
Little Meg seemed rather alarmed by that statement. "That's not true, Monsieur. Maman says there's always hope as long as a body breathes."  
  
"Don't talk to me about hope!" Anger gave strength to his voice and body and he sat up straight to fix a dark glare on her. "Hope just makes the darkness darker." His long, elegant hands, curved even at rest from forty years of playing music, clenched into fists at his side. The gesture was not lost on Meg who stepped back a pace, blue eyes wide.  
  
"I came here to help you, Monsieur Erik," Meg said, her voice trembling again. "If I'd found you dead I would have buried you, but I found you alive and so help me God, that's how you'll stay."  
  
That name, spoken with such determination. it took all the fight out of him and again he fell back. Meg's hands, small but deft, caught him halfway and eased him back down onto the pillows. "Why, when there is nothing left for me to live for?"  
  
Meg was silent a moment before answering. "Are you thirsty, Monsieur?" was all she said. He shook his head, but something cold and metallic pressed at his mouth anyway. He could smell water. Before he knew it he had drunk the little the spoon contained. A sound of cloth tearing, the sound of cloth being submerged and then wrung, and something cool and damp was patted around his cheeks, forehead, throat, hands.  
  
[[ She didn't answer the question. Why did she come down here? Why does she want to help a monster? ]]  
  
There was a little tugging at his shirt - [[Good grief, she's less than half my age. I refuse to be undressed like a child, by a child, her mother will have a fit! ]] Then the cool cloth patted the bare skin there as well, a cool relief against his hot skin. With an effort he caught her hands and opened his eyes. "Don't," he rasped. "Go away. Leave me."  
  
Erik was reminded very firmly of Madame Giry at her strictest, teaching the many undisciplined petite rats to dance as one body, one corps de ballet. "I can't do that," Meg replied calmly and freed herself from his grasp. "Not permanently, anyway." She laid the damp cloth across his forehead again and took up a blue-glazed pottery bowl, badly chipped. "I'm stepping outside to get you more water, Monsieur, and to see if the damp has left anything edible that the mob spared. I expect to be able to get back in here when I return." That was with a significant look at the bolts on the door. She even sounded like her mother! The comparison brought a smile to Erik's lips, tiny and unwilling, but a smile nonetheless.  
  
He froze. The rare smiles he permitted himself always twisted his face in a way that made him very aware of the subtle pressure of the mask on his face. The pressure that was missing now.  
  
[[ My mask. She's seen me without my mask. No wonder she recoiled. ]]  
  
It didn't occur to him, as he relapsed into sleep, that it hadn't stopped Meg from caring for him.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Meg knelt by the lake and scooped another bowl of icy water. Her mind worked furiously.  
  
{{ He's alive, he's speaking. He's weak, I think all he really needs is rest and food and water and time. He'll pull through. . . And then what? }} Meg sat back on her heels, staring at the glassy smooth ripples the bowl had left on the otherwise pristine surface of the lake without really seeing them A faint mist covered the lake's surface.  
  
{{ If he survives, what now? I couldn't let him die. . . but how many have I condemned by the hand of the Phantom of the Opera? How many will die now, because I took pity on a murderer? }}  
  
She was reminded of Christine's soliloquy. . . "Twisted every way. what answer can I give?" she whispered. "Am I to spare his life, and end another's chance to live.?"  
  
Meg's salty tears fell, one by one, into the bowl she clutched in her lap.  
  
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That last was a twist *I* didn't expect, please tell me what you think! Your opinions mean a great deal to me!  
  
AngelCeleste 


	6. The Invitation

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer, Blame and Setting: Same as before. I'm not making any money off of this, Melpomene hasn't made her signature appearance yet (though she's thinking about it), all the blame so far is mine, this whole thing is right after the ALW version but don't be surprised to find Leroux details in here as well, I keep them straight well enough in my own mind but like to mix them. Ah. Victorian-era swearwords lightly pepper the story but I don't think there's many here.  
  
Other notes: Don't worry about Christine, you'll hear directly from her soon enough, my promise. Right now I'm working on Meg and Erik. I'm not saying a word more.  
  
{{ Meg's thoughts }} [[ Erik's thoughts ]]  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 6 - The Invitation  
  
When Meg re-entered the bedroom, she found that Erik had again fallen asleep and she had to smile a little. She'd walked in on her mother asleep often enough: she knew teaching the petite rats was tougher on old Madame Giry than even the ballet teacher herself would care to admit. {{ But nobody up there would believe the Opera Ghost sleeps just like anyone else. }}  
  
Again, and carefully so as not to disturb the man, she spooned water to his lips that he drank unconsciously. {{ The poor man, he's so worn-out he won't wake even for water, and so thirsty he won't refuse it even asleep. }} Now that she was no longer worried sick for a man who might not last the night or terrified of the anger of the Phantom, she had an opportunity to study his face.  
  
Above the brows and the high, noble forehead was a mass of chocolate-brown hair, receding slightly. Christine had always called it black and Megan could see why, but it wasn't really. It looked as though it had once been meticulously trimmed and cared for, but had been allowed to grow slightly shaggy. If it was washed, it might actually look nice, but matted with oil and dirt and dead hair as it was it was not at its best.  
  
The left side of his face was flawless, absolutely smooth though too pale and wasted. {{ He needs food and needs it soon. }} She remembered seeing him before, once or twice during Christine's days at the Opera House, and the rosy glow of health had shone through his milky skin like a soft pink light shone through the fine white cotton fan that was one of Carlotta's props. The comparison made her blush, but with his golden-brown eyes he really wasn't unattractive. when only that good left side of his face was visible.  
  
The other side was a different story altogether. Twisted, ravaged, the skin and even the muscles beneath folded onto itself in a tangled web of raised and nerveless skin and deep ravines, blue veins and angry maroon arteries only too visible above the muscles that should have hidden it. Pallid and drawn and withered as he was now, it was all the more horrifying. and yet Meg felt no horror, only pity. The ravages of grief and self-neglect were all too apparent on his face and on his too-thin body, though.  
  
Meg was careful not to give him too much water, at this stage, too much could cause the man internal damage. It wasn't something she could have phrased, it was more a knowing, watching his breathing and the play of color in his face. Still much too pale and he would not get much color back until he ate, but that she could take care of as well, when she was able to return to the real world. {{ Strange to think of an opera house as the real world. I wonder what he would think of that? }}  
  
{{ I've got to get back. I have no idea what time it is, or even what day. Oh my God, Maman is going to kill me if I'm late again. But I can't just leave him, I need to let him know I'll be back. is there paper around here? }}  
  
A careful search of the rooms outside revealed a little bit of paper, not too badly damaged, in what had been Erik's room. It was the fine white parchment he used for writing music on, the neat compositions as opposed to the rough paper that Meg had seen the mob burning, containing the swift scratchings of a man desperate to get the music out of his head and onto paper as hastily as possible. Meg winced at spoiling such a pristine surface with the blackened end of a splinter in her unpracticed hand, but it had to be done. Erik needed to know someone cared about him enough to return.  
  
Erik was still asleep when she re-entered the room yet again. Quickly she made a note of the time on the clock on Christine's mantelpiece and jotted that down as well. She made sure the blue bowl was by his side on the night-table and full, the tin cup as well and both within easy reach, and slipped the note into the one wan hand the lay atop the covers.  
  
It had definitely been rather amusing, she thought back, to see that her imitation of her mother had the same effect on the feared Opera Ghost as the woman herself had on the ballet corps. {{ I will have to remember how I did that, I don't think he'll be a very good patient! }} Well, not quite the same reaction, the petite rats always fluttered when Madame Giry raised her voice and quickly did as told, whereas Erik had seemed about to laugh at her. She sighed. It had at least gotten the same results, and for that Meg was grateful.  
  
It wasn't too difficult, though she had not left a trail to follow, for the little dancer to thread her way back through the labyrinth and back to Christine's dressing room. The flywalk , she moved over quickly enough now that she knew she actually could.  
  
Still, the crunching of glass on boards beneath her feet as she approached the upper levels of the Paris Opera was very welcome. Since she wasn't especially hungry, she figured she couldn't have been gone for long. The dress she had borrowed from the closet in the locked room was badly soiled but her practice garb, laid out on the little cot in the dressing room, were clean and undisturbed. With a haste that could only come of long years performing with the Opera Garnier's ballet corps under Isabelle Giry's harsh tutelage, Meg stripped down, changed into her practice garb and straightened her tousled golden curls. The sooty smudges across her face she couldn't really do much about, but she spat on her hand and rubbed them off as best she could. Only when she deemed herself presentable did she dare to crack open the door into the hallway that she found with no small relief deserted.  
  
From there it was only a few moments to slip through the halls between the singers' dressing rooms and the dressing and warm-up rooms of Meg's corps. The little dancer was both surprised and relieved to find the place deserted from the dressing-room levels on up. A glance at the calendar and the clock told the girl what she needed to know: it was nearly two-thirty in the morning, and she had a performance tonight. She would need some sleep sometime, but this was no time for a girl to walk around in Paris alone, and right now she wouldn't be able to buy any food anyway. And she wasn't really sleepy right now.  
  
Passing by her locker, she noticed something white inside it though the vent that she knew she hadn't left there: a small triangle of white. Carefully she tried to take it out without needing to open the locker, but it fell and she clicked her tongue behind her teeth in mild vexation. It was just that opening the locker was a pain, was all.  
  
Meg stared at the object in question. It was a paper, neatly folded and sealed in white wax flecked with gold. {{ Who would send me a letter and seal it with wax? Only the aristocrats do that. }} Carefully she studied the missive.  
  
Her name was written across the front with gold ink and in a bold copperplate hand she did not recognize. The parchment itself was thick and heavy, expensive, more so even than the page on which she had written her note to Erik. Through the paper, in precise slits made in it, a narrow band of white lace was threaded. The seal was of a stylized dolphin jumping the centermost of three waves and looked like a few pen-strokes could draw it, yet somehow it conveyed a stark and simple beauty. The entire missive was simply lovely.  
  
"Well," she breathed, reluctant to have to crack that lovely seal to bits or mar that beautiful paper, but she steeled herself and broke the seal. Unfolding it, she drew a gasp.  
  
"Monsieur Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny and Mademoiselle Christine Daaè respectfully request the attendance of Madame Isabelle Giry and Mademoiselle Megan Giry at their wedding."  
  
Below that, in the same ink and the same strong hand that adorned the front of the missive, were listed the details: The date, the location, which was to be at Greenfield, one of the family's estates in Brittany as she recalled. All transportation and lodgings needed would be arranged by the Vicomte if a response was made quickly. The signatures, which gave away Raoul as the author of the invitation. What was the date? He eyes scanned back up to it.  
  
"One month." {{ My God, they're not wasting any time, are they? }} One month.  
  
How could she break this to Erik, without breaking him in the process?  
  
~*~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~*~  
  
Your thoughts, s'îl vous plaît? Merci beaucoup!  
  
AngelCeleste 


	7. Friend or Phantom?

Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer, Blame and Setting: Same as before.  
  
Other notes: At this point I have read all the reviews from everyone who's read up to Chapter Five. To everyone who has so far read and reviewed, thank you very much for your comments! They're just the encouragement I need to continue with this since this is not going to be an easy one for me to write. I'm allowing the story to go where it will. A warning for E/C fans, or those who just don't like E/M, sorry. Author's intuition tells me that it's going to be really difficult for me to turn this into an E/C (and I prefer E/C myself), *but!*. I will try to make this a good story for everyone who's stuck by me and supported me thus far! I know it seems to be going slowly, but I'm rather intrigued by the relationship developing between Erik and Meg. Chapters 4 and 5 have been updated, by the way.  
  
One last thing: according to this story, Meg is seventeen, and has been dancing for eight years. She's worked for the Opera House for five of those, and is there mainly because of her mother's influence as the ballet teacher. :-) (Mme. Giry, whom I'm using artistic license to name Isabelle, has been there for twelve.)  
  
{{ Meg's thoughts }} // Madame Giry's thoughts //  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Lachesis' Weavings by AngelCeleste85  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Ch. 7 - Friend or Phantom?  
  
Meg went home that night. At least she had told Madame Giry that she wouldn't be home early that night, but there was a good chance that her mother would stay up late for her. If that was so, Meg was sure to run into her. Of course, Madame Giry would not ask too many questions, but if she slipped even a little in her answer the woman would jump on her like a duck on a beetle.  
  
Fortunately the older woman was asleep when Meg eased the door open: she had obviously fallen asleep waiting for Meg. Her knitting lay in her lap where she sat in the chair that had once been Meg's father's before the fireplace.  
  
The younger Giry smiled. {{ Maman knows I don't always come home with her, and she still waits up for me. }} A glance around at the sparsely furnished home, rich in comparison to what she had left behind underground, showed her several of her mother's knitted blankets and she tucked one gently around her mother's sleeping form. It had always been her favorite, red and gold yarn held and worked together in a delicate but warm lace pattern.  
  
{{ Erik's not in need of blankets, but he does need food, and soon. And does he read? Of course he must, they burned so much music, and I never saw so many books in one place before they stole them. Why did they do that? He'll want something to do or he'll try to get up to his old mischief again and he's not strong enough for the flywalk yet, he shouldn't be allowed out of bed until he's gotten more than water into him for a week. }} Meg quickly changed for bed on her side of the curtain that partitioned the single room, leaving the fancy invitation out in the kitchen where Mme. Giry would be sure to see it when she made her morning tea. All the while she pondered how to be able to nurse Erik back to health. {{ I can't carry any kind of hot liquids over there, they'd be too cold to be any good to him by the time I got there, but there is the fireplace there and I can carry some of the wood from old props down, if they're not too heavy, and carry what I need to make something simple for him down there. Doesn't Maman have an old pot around here somewhere? She won't wake me in the morning so I'll be able to find it when she goes, if it's still here. And I have a little bit of money though she'd blister my ears if she knew where it came from, enough to buy some food. At least clean water isn't a problem though. That reminds me- oh, God's bones! }}  
  
Meg turned red in the darkness and privacy of her bed, and resolutely put that idea out of her mind. After all, it was pretty clear to her that the dreaded Opera Ghost was a man, and only a man, just like any other.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
The elder Giry awoke with a start as dawn light began to tint the tiny slash of sky in the small window a lighter shade of blue. // Meg came home safely, then, // she thought as she lifted the blanket off of her. She could hear her daughter's quiet snoring in the room on the other side of the curtain.  
  
What had woken her so early? Certainly not Meg's snoring! Usually she didn't wake until the bustle of traffic outside was too loud to ignore, which was always at dawn itself. She got up anyway, set about heating water for her tea, and her gaze fell on the ornate paper addressed to Meg that had been left on the countertop. // I was dreaming, wasn't I? //  
  
Isabelle Giry went white as she remembered. Those dreams, of the cloaked and frightening figure all in black . . . they had returned. But the man himself was dead.  
  
Wasn't he?  
  
The last time she had dreamed of the Phantom of the Opera, the disaster it foretold, and then the Phantom's ringing voice echoed, had indeed befallen the entire house, cast crew and management. She had tried to stop it, tried to get the managers and the Vicomte to listen, but a mere ballet teacher was not important enough to be heard. In mid-note of that fateful performance, La Carlotta's acclaimed voice had become the horrible croaking of a bullfrog - Isabelle was not superstitious but if anything smelled like witchcraft it was that! - and Joseph Buquet's dead body had crashed with a sickening thud to the boards below. The famous chandelier had been flung to the floor by the Opera Ghost as he laughed like a madman, and killed an innocent bystander. It had nearly killed Christine Daae.  
  
Isabelle prayed that her dream this night was not a precursor to future events, but even the hot tea would not dispel the heavy sinking feeling in her stomach.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Meg woke up to the whistling of the teapot. She had not slept well, dreams had haunted her sleep that disturbed her but she could no longer quite recall them. When she heard the door close a little while later, Meg sprang into action.  
  
She dug out the chest that her mother had packed away her father's clothes in. She had no idea if anything in there would fit the man below the Opera House, but he needed something to wear and something was better than nothing. Fortunately, it seemed the father she had never seen or heard much of had been a pretty large man and it would be better if what she brought was too big for Erik rather than too small.  
  
In no time she had found two laborer's shirt, two sets of pants. There wasn't anything the little dancer could do about boots for him, but that could be taken care of in time, with a bit of caution. {{ He doesn't need them yet anyway. If I catch him walking around I'm going to lecture him until his ears turn blue. }} A quick search in the kitchen turned up the old pot she had remembered and even some fairly fresh vegetables. {{ Cut them up a bit so that it's easier for him to handle and he might be able to keep them down, but I still need something else if I'm going to get real food into him. Chicken or fish won't be strong enough, but meat's expensive, I might not have enough, I'll have to stretch that. And there'll have to be enough for two of us, though he can't eat very much yet - I can eat a fair amount, and the lake will serve to chill it all until he gets hungry again. When was the last time he ate, or does he even know? }}  
  
A little while later after a quick trip to the market, Meg walked into her home with a little bit of meat. That and the beef stock she found in the kitchen, plus the vegetables, went into the bottom of the pot: on top of those went the newspapers, the day's Moniteur and l'Epoque she had picked up, Erik had to be incredibly bored down there without any music! Soap - he was going to have to bathe somehow and she'd be red the whole time but if it came to it she'd help him - went into a spare bowl with a spoon and a rough cloth. Then she folded the two dark pairs of pants and the two white shirts.  
  
Meg looked around, wondering if there was anything else she should bring but not really seeing the room she stood in. What she saw was the little room, so elegantly furnished for Christine by the man who loved her, and the man himself surrounded by all the things that must remind him of her.  
  
Why had she been so thoughtless?  
  
"Oh, Erik," she whispered as her gaze fell on something. She took the topmost shirt from the pile in the pot and folded the item into it neatly. Then she departed, the sun high in the sky overhead.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Erik awoke again. He was alone, neatly tucked into the warm comforters with which he had furnished Christine's bed and the lamps were turned low. [[ First things first, how in hell am I going to manage to get to the necessary?]]  
  
It was when he moved his hand that he became aware of the paper in his hand. Frowning, he opened it up. It was difficult to read, but with some effort Erik deciphered the scrawled hand and poor spelling. Meg had had to leave to see about getting some food and to make sure she hadn't missed any rehearsals - he could well believe her mother would be harsh with her for missing them - but not to worry, she would be back as soon as possible and had left water for him.  
  
In surprise he studied the spelling of the note. Equally surprising and telling was the handwriting in which it was written: charcoal, as he guessed when brushing it with his hand to find the telltale black residue transferred to his waxy skin, wasn't the most reliable writing utensil but this was a surprise. [[ She's illiterate. She can speak well enough and knows a little bit about spelling, but she doesn't really know how to write. I can't imagine Madame Giry failing to teach her daughter something like that unless. That is certainly a surprise, though. I would not have suspected it of either one. ]]  
  
Nature was calling, and wry smile or not, he really couldn't ignore it any longer. It took both time and a good deal of the strength that remained to him, but he managed to stagger there and back using the walls and furniture as support. As he passed in front of the vanity that had been Christine's on the way back, he had to look in the mirror. Erik had never been vain about his appearance, but this was really shocking.  
  
His eyes had sunk into his head, they seemed to be staring out of dark caverns. A light sheen of sweat from his trip covered his forehead, accentuating the waxy pallor. His cheeks were sunken as well, and the shirt that had fit him perfectly the day Christine had left - not the same one, he dimly recalled going through the motions of living for what seemed an interminable amount of time, but similar to it - hung on him like a tent now. It was not very clean, he realized, and at the same time realized that the damp and chill would have gotten to the rest of his clothes by now, he had never had many to start with.  
  
"Merde," he muttered, turning slowly away from the mirror. Erik rarely swore, but this time it just seemed the only thing that could be said, and if he didn't hear something, anything, he thought he would go mad. Not satisfied with the sound of the word in French this time, he swore again in English. "Shit."  
  
He sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking a little from the effort. The shirt was ruined and frankly it was rank, as well. So were the trousers, but not so badly. He removed the shirt and cast it carelessly into a corner. Tried to, anyway: it didn't go much further than the foot of the bed. With a sigh, Erik laid down on the bed, ignoring the water on the night-table.  
  
~*~*~*~*~  
  
Erik, as she saw upon opening the door to what was once Christine's room, was very much awake though lying down. From the way he lay, Meg guessed he'd already tried walking around. She nearly started and for a moment stared, then tried not to look at the strange white lines, white like snow against white parchment, running every which way on his bare chest. By the look on his face, Meg wondered if there was someplace she could slip off to before the tempest broke. She wasn't given the chance.  
  
"It's about time," he snapped out. "Where have you been?"  
  
"I am sorry, Monsieur," Meg replied crisply. Rarely would she rock the boat, but this time she let indignation flow freely. "I could not get here sooner, I did try."  
  
"Have you any idea," he said slowly and with exaggerated emphasis as though speaking to an idiot, "how unutterably dull it is to sit in one place with literally nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and wait for nothing in a place where time has no meaning?"  
  
Where she got the courage to say it, she had no idea: part of her was still very much afraid of this man. "If time has no meaning here, Monsieur, then it must not have been too great a strain on your patience."  
  
"Don't bandy words with me, girl!" the man nearly shouted. It sounded as though his voice rang from all the corners of the room: an unfortunate effect, since it only magnified the strain Meg picked up in it.  
  
That put Meg's back up all the way. Very few people had ever yelled at her, she made it clear that she would not put up with it from those she did not have to take orders from and Meg was determined not to let even the Opera Ghost think he could run her roughshod like that. "I don't suppose you know, Monsieur Opera Ghost who knows all and sees all, but we have had late rehearsals every night for the last week. Andre and Firmin are rushing through repairs to the foyer and auditorium to be ready for 'Il Muto' in two weeks. Don't think it was easy getting all this over the flywalk, either, or into the opera to begin with."  
  
Erik's temper seemed to have cooled under Meg's return fire, though. He even smiled a little bit, letting a cool, almost mocking tone enter his words. "Whose fault is it that I don't know all that is happening? Back to the same old repertoire, it seems, is that all that screeching cow of a Carlotta can sing? Better to teach La Sorelli to sing and put her in the lead soprano role. Yes, I know very well she's a contralto and incorrigibly tone-deaf. And you should have used the boat."  
  
Meg was about to retort to the remark about La Sorelli and paused, changed what she was going to say. "What boat?"  
  
"Wha- I see." For a moment he was silent. When he spoke again, his voice was the carefully concealing tenor she was used to hearing from him. "There's two boats, but Christine took one when she left and I don't know what happened to it. Though it is probably good that you did not know where to find it, I will teach you to handle the boat myself. Once you understand how to work with it, you should use that. Until then, if you find either one I forbid you to use them, for your safety. There is a river running through this lake deeper down and the currents can be treacherous."  
  
Indeed his foul temper was subdued for the moment, and Meg felt that the conversation was in safer waters as she removed a small kettle from its perch on her shoulder, evidently where it had hung by its swinging handle for the journey over the flywalk, and the makings of some broth. "I'll see if there's any way to clear out the fireplace for this," she said, gesturing to the kettle, "and if so you might be able to get a bath. You look like you could use one. But if you leave the covers on, you won't catch cold, and Maman always says that light talk makes light work.  
  
It was easy enough, Meg realized, to find kindling for a fire in the fireplace. It was all around, the remains of Erik's shattered Louis- Philippe furniture. Dated and unattractive the furniture was certainly, and yet Meg felt terrible about putting any of the splintered fragments into the fireplace. Erik, when asked, only gestured vaguely and she could only guess she had permission. Much of it was already badly charred from the depredations of the lynch mob and she used only those pieces that bore some scarring from previous flames. None looked quite dry enough for use, but that could not be helped. Soon a small if somewhat acrid and smoky blaze was going in the fireplace, water bubbled in the cast-iron cauldron, and the wet soot that hadn't made it onto the second dress she had borrowed from Christine's wardrobe had been deposited outside in a heap. It wasn't long after that when Meg carried the bowl of mash and the tin cup with fresh water in.  
  
"I'm not a wonderful cook," Meg said modestly, looking aside from Erik's bared chest - {{ So many scars! }} - to the strange dark borwn-gold eyes she could at least look at, "but Maman taught me something of how to feed someone who shouldn't eat much, I was sick a lot as a little girl."  
  
Erik would not let her feed him this time, though his hand trembled slightly each time he brought the spoon to his lips. "This is good," he remarked quietly after tasting it. Was that a trace of surprise in his voice?  
  
"When was the last time you ate, Monsieur?"  
  
The older man sighed almost imperceptibly. "I do not recall... I know I tried to eat, but it all tasted like ashes. I couldn't stomach it, after a while, but I... I've lost track of time entirely." He looked at her sharply. "Shouldn't you eat as well, Mademoiselle?"  
  
Meg jumped a little and almost blushed, but in short order she'd seated herself on the vanity chair, still by the door where she had left it, with the bowl from home holding some of the same in her lap. They ate in a slightly strained silence, neither quite sure what to say to the other. Erik finally pushed the bowl away three-fourths empty and Meg set it on the bedstead.  
  
"Monsieur," Meg said hesitantly. She held out the little package of white shirt that she'd pulled out of the kettle on arriving. "I don't know if you want this back or not - I found it that night, kept it safe for you." Oddly, she felt a little nervous about this, not knowing what kind of reaction it might provoke from the infamous and dangerous Opera Ghost, but it was his by right. Slowly he took the proffered package, as if unsure whether it held rose petals or an old rococo figurine or a viper to bite him. Meg watched the long hands move with an unconscious sensuality through the thin white cloth of the laborer's shirt and emerge again with his porcelain mask.  
  
Erik's hands trembled as they held the mask, cradled it in his palms. His voice trembled as well, but quickly she realized it was anger that shook him.  
  
"You bring this back to me now? You came down here yesterday like a thief in the night expecting to find a body, and would have buried me without the courtesy of a mask?"  
  
"I -" But Erik steamrolled over any argument she could have made.  
  
"I asked you once before, Mademoiselle Megan Giry, and you didn't answer the question. Now I'm demanding a response and I will not let you go until I have one. Why are you here?" As she jumped up in a near-panic, he snatched her wrist almost unconsciously. "Answer me! Run if you want after that, I won't chase you, but answer me first!"  
  
Meg felt the fluttering of fear again in her stomach. Erik had only just gotten some beef broth and cool water into him, yet already he seemed unaccountably stronger. Certainly she would have had difficulty in freeing her wrist from his grasp, why had she not realized before now that he was so strong? And yet Erik was nowhere near recovered!  
  
"Release me," she said tightly. Erik held on a moment longer, fixing her with his amber stare from eyes that sparked with more life than she had yet seen within them, then nodded and leaned back against the pillows, his arms folded behind his head. Meg could not read what was going on inside that mind and she remembered uncomfortably that she was alone here with this man, the infamous Phantom of the Opera, who had killed one man already to get his way and another out of spite.  
  
"As I thought. Pity? Is that why you are here? It is misplaced, girl, I never asked for your pity or anyone else's. What do I need with pity? It does not clothe the body, it does not feed the body or spirit, it does not heal..." Erik's eyes snapped open, hard and cold, as unforgiving as razors, and then softened as his words trailed off, looking at Meg. Without realizing it she had inched slowly away from him toward the door. "Fear and hate, or fear and pity," he whispered. "Is that all this face will ever inspire? Go, you do not need to be here. You have a warm house to return to, your mother is likely waiting. Go. I can take care of myself."  
  
To Meg's surprise she heard hoarse bitterness in his voice, hidden well but not well enough to someone who had for all intents and purposes lived for five years within an opera house. {{ Maybe voice isn't my strongest talent, but I should think I could tell when someone's acting and when someone's hiding after this long here. }} It was that bitterness, the full expectation that she would go as quickly as her legs could carry her, that arrested Meg's feet where they were.  
  
Erik was no longer looking at her: he had turned on his side and was struggling to reach the dented tin water cup on the nightstand: it just barely evaded his fingertips. Tears blurred her sight and before she comprehended what she was doing, she had knelt by his side and was holding the cup to his lips.  
  
"I can't leave, Erik, because you can't take care of yourself again. Not yet. You need a friend."  
  
His eyes regarded her almost pleadingly from within their darkened caves in his face. "A friend," he repeated slowly when he had drained the cup. The words almost sounded foreign to him. "And you would be a. friend. to me? A friend to the Phantom you fear?"  
  
She could not hold back the tears any longer and they spilled down her cheeks. Truth had hit her full on, she had to be honest with the man behind these pleading eyes. Watching him, the terrifying Opera Ghost unable to reach a water cup from his sickbed, had brought the realization home.  
  
Perhaps it was the metaphoric value of the picture, but... How could she be afraid of someone so absolutely vulnerable?  
  
Fear faded from her, finally and forever she knew, as she watched the reflection of horror in his face.  
  
"Don't cry," he whispered, sounding every bit as terrible as he looked: his cold hand rose and brushed the falling drops off of her cheeks.  
  
"I was afraid of you, before." Meg admitted and then hurried on, knowing that in his place, such an admission would have crumpled her. "Some of the things you do still frighten me. But I see you, Erik. I see you, not the mask you always wear, and I'm not afraid anymore, not of you."  
  
He exhaled heavily. "And what do you see, when you say that you see me? Look at the legacy others have left, when they thought they saw me!" He gestured, sitting up now. "You've looked away from this all night. Look at it now, can you see past what others couldn't? Can you see past what they did? Tell me, am I a human or a monster?"  
  
Meg gazed at the scars that crisscrossed his bare chest with horror. All of them were white in age, but some evidenced deep wounds. Their whiteness stood out against the general pallor of his skin like brands. He turned and his back was revealed to be nearly covered in the same kind of scars. More ran down his arms, and her eyes widened when she saw the ones that trailed down the softer skin of each forearm. They traced the blue veins precisely and yet somehow, they didn't seem like self-inflicted wounds. The marks of ropes had not yet faded from his wrists, nor had the scars of whips and knives and coals healed. In one place, his right arm seemed a little crooked and another scar, a large patch, lay right over that - a compound fracture. Meg was filled with grief and horror, not at the scars themselves, but at the hate they evidenced his endurance of. How had he borne the pain inside? How had he found the strength to heal the outside? She could see so much in him now, but how could she find the words to express this?  
  
"What do you see, Mademoiselle, when you see this? Others thought me a monster, too, and tried to make me look the part better."  
  
"I don't think you're a monster."  
  
"Then what do you see? Tell me, I want to know!" Erik's voice brooked no argument now. "I swear, no harm will come to you for an honest answer, regardless of what it is, as long as it is honest."  
  
"I see a man who has many scars, inside and out, from being hurt too often. I see someone, a person, who is so used to being feared that he manipulates it to get his way. Someone who hides from the world and tells himself that he is separate from it, when he only reinforces their judgments of him. Someone who calls himself a ghost to be on equal terms with the ghosts of the past that he runs from. In many ways, he really is a ghost, a shadow, of who he could be if he allowed himself the chance. I see someone who has lived alone for too long and barely remembers what a friend is."  
  
Erik's iron self-control had shattered, she saw, and the eyes that glowed with an amber flame in darkness now let fall single tears, all that his too- dry body could spare but the emotion was clear in his husky voice. "You do see. You really do see me."  
  
{{ Propriety be damned, }} thought the little ballet dancer. {{ He needs someone to hold him now. He really is just a man. Not an angel like he told Christine, not a phantom like he tells the world, just a man who needs a friend. }} She rose from the floor and sat herself down on the pillow with Erik and leaned back against the carved oak headboard, cradling his head against her stomach as they both wept, for the past and for the sacrifice of a little boy's life.  
  
"Erik," she whispered, looking down at the ravaged ruin that was the left side of his face. {{ Erik, not "monster," or "beast" or "Opera Ghost." Erik. }} "Erik, you do need a friend. If you want a friend, I'm willing to stand for the job. If you'll have me, that is."  
  
His only response was to wrap his arms around her waist as his dry sobs shook them both and eventually rocked them into a gentle, dreamless sleep.  
  
~*~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~*~ ~*~*~*~*~  
  
That last was a twist *I* didn't expect, please tell me what you think! Your opinions mean a great deal to me!  
  
AngelCeleste 


	8. What Price To Pay?

Lachesis' Weavings, Ch. 08 By AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer, Blame and Setting: Same as always.  
  
Other notes: In response to the reviews I've gotten since my last post: - Kristina, Opera Ghost Kid, Lee22, Deanna and Dahna Kasydi, thank you very much for your kind comments, they are heartening since this story is not an easy one to write! - Opera Ghost Kid, re: the placing of the mask. Consider it artistic license? =) After all, in Leroux it's his entire face that's covered, ALW took a few liberties himself. I generally mix ALW and Leroux anyway so this is just one subtle way of making the story undeniably mine. =)  
  
I apologize to everyone for the brackets, etc, being used in place of italics. I can't get this site to accept HTML from my computer and can't use another for it. Je suis desole, but I can't do anything about it, I've tried everything I can think of to get Fanfiction.net to accept it. It just won't, sorry.  
  
Finally you get to understand the meaning of the title, if you didn't already!  
  
Erik's a gentleman, yes. Note the compound word: gentle man! I'm tossing the hard, cold image of a man who doesn't need or want human contact right out the window now to some extent. Keep in mind that this is the Victorian Era these characters live in, and as late as 1905 women could be arrested for wearing a skirt more than three inches short of her ankles (I bet the constables loved measuring that)!  
  
That said, on with the phic!  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings By AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 08 - What Price To Pay?  
  
Erik awoke first, his good cheek pressed into something that was warm and soft in a comforting and pleasant way. It was with a bit of shock that he felt his pillow move! With that, memory returned again. [[ I seem to be having these memory blackouts more and more often these days. ]]  
  
He knew that this entire situation was highly improper. Christine had been an orphan girl and that had prompted his bold course of action regarding her, but Meg would have to face Isabelle Giry, and Erik did not wish that on anyone. Madame Giry would likely do more than throw fits his way if she ever found out, but for some reason he just couldn't bring himself to move. For one thing, his arms were still locked around Meg's waist and moving them would certainly disturb her.  
  
[[ Oh, do be honest with yourself, Erik. You're enjoying this too much. ]]  
  
It was true, he decided. Erik had never understood why men sought out women, even paid women, for a few hours in the dead of the night. He knew well enough what was going on, and yet this was what he had dreamed about for years. Just being able to hold and be held by a woman, without fear, who saw and understood him.  
  
Christine, he realized with a cold clarity of thought, could never have understood him. She simply was not mature enough mentally: she wanted a man obviously stronger than her who would direct and control her life, and Erik could not, would not, do that. Aside from his face, it was plain by her behavior that it would never have worked. In many ways, she would be dependent on the man she married and Erik simply could not afford that kind of demand on him.  
  
[[ Is that why I drove her away? Did I know? ]]  
  
Meg was waking, he could tell by a slight change in her breathing, in the rise and fall of his head on her stomach. A light blue dress of soft wool, he noted absently, he hadn't paid enough attention the night before. He should get up now, should have gotten up the moment he woke, and yet something about the way one of her small hands rested on the back of his head, cradling him, and the other on the back of his thin shoulder. it held him as surely as if it were a vise. [[ My mother never held me, and I could never have gotten a woman to stay in the room even if I'd unbent my pride enough to pay her. So why does Meg stay? ]]  
  
Reluctantly Erik sat up and withdrew his arms from around little Meg. She mumbled something in her sleep. "Maman. five more minutes. please?" Erik bit back a laugh, a good, honest laugh, as it would have most certainly woken her completely. Carefully, he lowered her off the oaken headboard and laid her head down on the crushed pillows.  
  
He blushed then as he realized his mistake. In doing so her ankle-length skirts had pushed up to her knees, well beyond decency. She had a dancer's legs, strong and hardened by years of ballet, and the tousled golden curls around her head added a certain charm to her youthful innocence. Just in sleep the bodice of her dress had twisted askew and no longer quite covered everything it should. Quickly he laid a corner of the rumpled covers over her to the neck, though not without an admiring glance at her ankles, and moved to the chair that she had used.  
  
[[ I suppose La Sorelli is the one with the calf's eyes, but Meg has a harder edge to her. She's made of sterner stuff than the rest of the corps de ballets. Perhaps I will have to bring this to Monsieur Andre's attention, she may well have the drive to be a prima ballerina. ]]  
  
His quarter-full bowl of broth and mash was still sitting by the water cup and, though cold, still looked and smelled good. [[ Cold leftovers, but it's a good sign all the same. ]] Erik picked up the spoon and finished it with small bites, thinking all the while.  
  
[[ No, I can't bring her to the attention of the managers. They likely believe I've left, since they found my home and destroyed it, and have not heard from me since. I have a small score to settle with them there. Perhaps I should leave them a note, reprimand their guest manners: after all, it is my Opera House. ]]  
  
It was his second shock of the morning and hit Erik with the force of an epiphany. [[ I don't know what kind of bewitchery that girl did on me, ]] Erik smiled, it was unpracticed and wry, but a genuine smile all the same. [[ But for some reason, I feel like continuing on. ]]  
  
[[ Lachesis, the Weaver of Fate, the Measurer of Lives. What are your plans for me now, what have you hidden in the warp and the woof of the pattern that you craft of the threads of life? So fickle you and your sisters have been, sometimes kind, more often cruel. Clotho, cruelest of all, for you spun my thread and dealt me the cards that, for better or worse, I play. Even Lachesis cannot alter what you decree in your threads. Atropos, as fond of games as your younger sisters, you who close your shears on my thread almost to the point of cutting it and then hand it back to the Spinner. What will you take away from me now, in exchange for the peace of one night with someone who can see? The Moerae. Christine told me that you are known in the stories of the North as the Sisters of Wyrd, and in Norse myth there is always a price to be paid. ]]  
  
Meg's breathing had relaxed again into deep sleep and Erik, again full, laid his bowl aside with three spoonfuls left in the bottom. Was there any way he could arrange a bath of some kind, he wondered at the back of his mind. His gaze fell again on the sleeping Meg.  
  
[[ Lachesis, I beg you, show some kindness to one whom you have thus far toyed with. ]]  
  
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A short chapter, I know. I had intended something entirely different this chapter, but I'll save it for the next. As always, please feed me, I'm a starving student and feedback makes a good breakfast.  
  
AngelCeleste85 


	9. A Bridge of Trust

Disclaimer/Blame: As always. Just covering my butt.  
  
Other notes: My strange blend of Leroux and ALW comes through again. I don't picture Meg as wishy-washy like the rest of the corps: I think she could have a very strong personality. I also don't see her as a complete innocent like Christine. Just my thoughts, feel free to disagree.  
  
Thalia (Greek Muse of Comedy) has been speaking quietly throughout this story, more so in recent chapters. Melpomene (Muse of Tragedy) seems to be resting at the moment. "Thank you" to them, and also to their sister Calliope (Muse of Epics), for your help as well since I think that's what this is turning out to be (at least, it feels like one).  
  
I believe the references I make to Greek mythology are self-explanatory. The Muses themselves are the 9 daughters of Mnemosyne (goddess of memory), Orpheus is the son of Calliope. Euterpe is the Muse of Music. Apollo, god of light and music, Pan the god of nature, ugly but plays beautiful music when he's in a good mood.  
  
I'm getting rid of the well. ::grins and waves her blank paper (artistic license) around:: All the incidents that happened between Erik and Christine at the well. I'm moving them elsewhere. Where, I'll decide when I get there, if I decide to include them at all. I hope you're enjoying my mindless ramblings 'cause you're getting a buttload here (12 pages' worth)!  
  
Thanks to all of you who have been so patient with me and reviewed my work! Ok, I'm shutting up. On with the story!  
  
{{ Meg's thoughts }} [[ Erik's thoughts ]]  
  
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Lachesis' Weavings, Chapter 9 by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Ch. 9 - A Bridge of Trust  
  
Day by day, Erik grew stronger. He also grew more and more restless with each day of enforced idleness as Meg refused to let him out of bed in her presence, though she knew he walked around when she was aboveground. Erik was not yet strong enough to handle the flywalk, let alone the boat across the often treacherous and deadly-cold lake, and they both knew it.  
  
A week and a half after he first regained consciousness in Meg's care, Erik decided that he would end this irritating convalescence. He'd been walking around in her absence frequently, rebuilding his strength and stamina though it was clear he could not neglect himself like that again.  
  
Breaking out of the confines of the room meant, of course, deliberately provoking Meg. That in itself was a challenge, but how to do so in a way that would not anger her without cause? He had no fear of her temper, but did not wish to break the easy peace that had settled between them in the time that they had begun to get to know one another.  
  
That night, he greeted her standing in the doorway to the bedroom that was once Christine's. He had left his mask on the night-table: she had already seen him without it and Erik was pleased in a quiet way that the little dancer flinched neither from the sight of his face or body, or from the feel of his cold touch. "Mademoiselle,", he said gravely, knowing humor danced in his eyes and let it give his voice the lie.  
  
As expected, Meg flew into a bustle, hustling her charge backwards. He let a small smile crack through the façade now. "Good gracious, Erik," she exclaimed. "I don't know how long you've been standing there in the doorway but you're going right back to bed this instant, I will not have you falling over on me just because you decided to do something foolish and stand around - Shirtless, of all things! - in the cold and damp! My God, you'll catch your death of cold that way!"  
  
Apparently Meg had decided formality was a little ridiculous and the former Opera Ghost had to agree. [[ After all, she did save my life. What that's worth, I don't know, but she does seem to care. ]] But he had no idea whether to call her "little Meg" like the managers did when she so rarely came to their attention, or Meg, like her friends in the corps de ballet. "Giry" seemed a bit too impersonal for a friend - she did consider him one, no? Better not to assume, Erik decided. The backs of his legs hit the mattress and he nearly fell back. Meg tried to take advantage of that momentary imbalance and almost succeeded. Erik held his feet, if just barely, and gave her a very amused look before settling down of his own will.  
  
"You take more after your mother every day, did you know that?" he chuckled. "You are the only person who has ever managed to regularly push Erik around to her liking." Meg relaxed a bit and smiled. She had yet another load with her, he saw, a neatly tied package that she set down on the vanity and started to untie. "In all seriousness, Mademoiselle-"  
  
"You can call me Meg if you want. Or little Meg," she interrupted.  
  
'Mademoiselle Meg-" he tried again. Meg laughed.  
  
"Just Meg. Unless you want me calling you Monsieur at every turn. And curtsying. I will, too!"  
  
"A dancer should know how to curtsy properly," he returned archly.  
  
Meg grinned. "Trust me, I can't. I can dance decently enough that Maman doesn't talk my ear off about it at home unless I've really been horrible, but I'll never be prima, the whole corps knows that. A curtsy? Out of the question, I'm all knees and elbows. If I don't fall over or break something valuable I'm guaranteed to hit someone!"  
  
Erik let his rare but rich laughter roll out into the room. "It sounds more like you will try to curtsy, then! I think I should like to see this, if it's truly as bad as you say. But as you wish, Meg. Since you seem to be my keeper at the moment, I suppose I will need to ask permission to get out of bed when you're in the room?"  
  
Meg sighed, but by her body language she was more amused than anything else. "You should still be in bed. I can't believe you, standing in the doorway like that. How long were you there?"  
  
"Not long. You realize I am going to have to get up sometime." Meg turned and studied him with a critical eye. He was still rail-thin, but now that he'd been able to get a good deal more food and water into him he was no longer skin and bones. "If you are concerned about the lack of flesh," he said in a mild but dry tone, "I have always been slender at best."  
  
"Slender, my backside," Meg shot back. "You wouldn't believe how many in the corps would kill to be that skinny." It was a measure of the trust they had built up in the past week that such a remark and the way it slipped out was easily handled by both of them.  
  
The former Phantom refrained from making any of the several quick retorts that sprang to mind regarding Meg's backside. "I think I could guess. Lucky for them that they are not or they would fall right out of the costumes they barely manage to wear anyway." Meg raised one eyebrow and gave him an odd smile, but Erik could have sworn she was also blushing under that mop of golden curls.  
  
"You're still too skinny though. If I let you walk around now, you'll be back to bones in no time."  
  
"It's not like you can keep me in bed, anyway." Too late Erik realized the double implications of that remark when Meg turned bright red for certain. "I apologize, I should not have said that."  
  
"Not your fault," she said, stifling embarrassed laughter. "All right. I won't try to keep you there if you can get up and walk from the bathroom to the door." Erik smiled in triumph. "Five times straight," she added. "No stumbling, no stopping."  
  
"Quite demanding for someone who doesn't want me working off my gains in weight so soon," he remarked, but at least Meg's color had gone down. Really, he had not meant to embarrass her in such a way... was he coloring in return? "I suppose no sweating, either?"  
  
"Don't give me ideas. If I'm not happy you're staying in bed no matter what."  
  
Erik controlled the color that rose to his cheeks again. [[ Really, her mother would throw fits! ]] This casual banter was showing a hidden side as often as not now. [[ All the more reason to get me out of the bedroom. ]]  
  
Meg watched Erik as he rose smoothly. In a week's time since his last explosion, Erik's aloof demeanor had warmed considerably. At times he was still stiff in his manners, but most of that had faded by the other night. She was still blushing about having to help a man bathe, but the memory was funny all the same. {{ Meg, all you did was scrub his back and run squeaking out of the bathroom! }} At any rate, he seemed more comfortable about not wearing his mask for her. And the shirt, or the lack thereof... she couldn't really blame him. Meg was smuggling her father's old shirts in as quickly as she could, but that hadn't been very many since she was also trying to bring in food and reading materials, but the shirt that she had found Erik in... Meg shuddered whenever she looked at that, wadded up carelessly in a corner. {{ I'm going to have to take that shirt out sometime and burn it. Soon. }}  
  
Erik made it to the other side of the room without trouble and started back. "Rap the wall, I want to make sure you're not trying to cut a step each way." He really did move with a grace she'd bet even La Sorelli would envy, Christine had told her about that in hushed tones, as if afraid he would overhear.  
  
"Oui, Madame!" Erik's falsetto mimicry of the prima ballerina's contralto was so absolutely spot-on that Meg jumped and took three steps towards the door before she realized it. "That's one," he added, glancing down at her as he passed the laughing heap his young friend made on the floor. "Am I going to have to help you into bed after collapsing on me? After all the time you've forced on me to stay idle," - another rap on the wall - "that'd be a good change. I could make soup for you instead. Two." It was lucky for him that Meg's face was buried in the carpet, for just then he stumbled and caught himself on the foot of the bed.  
  
Meg sat up, still laughing. "You scared me! I thought that great camel had followed me, was really standing there, she's a great one for telling tales!"  
  
"Hypocritical, too." Rap! "Haven't you ever noticed? She's good at hiding it, but she makes the Saint Andrew's cross on that little wooden ring of hers any time someone mentions the Opera Ghost. Third trip. I know, I've seen her do it. On three separate occasions. Not to mention the horseshoe was her idea, as well. Watch her carefully next time someone drops the doings of the Opera Ghost into the conversation." A fourth knock on the wall.  
  
"I'll do that."  
  
"There, five times." Erik had to admit, Meg was shrewder than he'd given her credit for. The distance was about five meters each way, but it added up quickly on his recovering system and he'd been forced to handle turning around carefully. It was with an effort that he held himself up straight now. "And I'll try the boat tomorrow."  
  
Again she eyed him critically, unknowingly looking just like her mother less forty years. "I don't suppose I could stop you anyway. Fine, you can help me clean up out there starting tomorrow. That's been a mess for too long already."  
  
"How bad is it?" Erik leaned against the wall now, unwilling to sit down now that he was actually up and about officially. "I remember a little bit.. You were there, might have some idea of how to compare it. Meg," Erik stumbled over saying her name without the respectful "Mademoiselle" preceding it, but continued. "Do not try to make it easy, the fact of it is I was burglarized by a lynch mob that was looking for my blood."  
  
"Didn't you see any of it? You said you lived out there for a couple of weeks."  
  
"No, I went through the motions," Erik corrected her gently. "There's a difference."  
  
Meg was stunned. Weeks, and... "You really didn't see any of..."  
  
"Not enough to register it. All I really recall is cold and dark, but after a while even that. I couldn't see very much the first night you made dinner, all the light was in here, and I have not had the heart to look since. Not even a little while ago. I opened the door when I heard you coming in the front."  
  
Meg shivered involuntarily. It had been a close call indeed. She took his hand, cool and dry, and held it as she told him the damage. {{ Better that he hear it from someone who cares about him than have to walk right out into it unprepared. }}  
  
Erik seemed unmoved by most of it, locked away within his mental fortress. "And... the organ," he asked, the hesitation only slight in his voice but it spoke volumes. Meg could only grasp his hand more tightly. It was all the answer he needed.  
  
"It might be repairable," she said softly. "I don't know anything about that. It looked pretty bad, but things aren't always as bad as they look."  
  
Erik sighed and finally made his way over to the bed. He took the chair on the far side, though, and leaned onto the night-table. His companion sat on the bed by his side facing him, their knees close but not touching. "Somehow I doubt it. Surely someone in that mob would know how to demolish a pipe organ. And amateurs can do worse damage than a professional, if they are angry enough. I have no doubts that they were that night."  
  
It was Meg's turn to sigh now. "Do you want all your bad news at once?"  
  
Erik just motioned for her to continue.  
  
The little dancer took a deep breath before starting this. She had absolutely no idea what reaction to expect from Erik to this news. "I'm going to have to leave, with Maman, in about three weeks. I'll be back, it's only a short journey."  
  
"And the reason?" Erik prompted gently when she could not continue. Meg just got up and went to the vanity. The bundle she had brought in was almost completely unwrapped and from within she pulled out an ornate white parchment.  
  
"This was in my lock-closet earlier this week." She handed it to him.  
  
Reading the paper, Erik's heart sank. She had made her choice for certain. But he controlled his face once more, kept it as expressionless as the white mask that lay beside his arm on the nightstand. "I wish her happiness, then."  
  
The little mantle clock chimed the time in its soft crystal tones and interrupted them.. Erik looked up as it hit eleven. "You've been making a habit of coming down here at night after rehearsals and going home after I go to sleep, haven't you?" Meg couldn't deny it and nodded, caught off- guard by the sudden change in topic. Erik felt the gentleman's duty tugging at him and it put something of the stiffness back in his manner. They were going to have to share a room. "'Il Muto' starts this week, tomorrow night, does it not? You should rest. The best I can do is to offer you this bedroom: consider its contents yours if you wish to. I will see about offering better hospitality as soon as I am able. If you would like to change for bed, I will see about finding something for a pallet on the floor."  
  
"You're not sleeping on the floor, Erik."  
  
"I cannot offer you anything less than the bed if you wish to stay here tonight," the older man returned.  
  
"I sleep on the floor at home, I'm not averse to it."  
  
"Then it's all the more reason you should spend at least one night in a proper bed."  
  
"And what did you call that awful coffin?"  
  
"You saw that, then. That was my bed, what else?"  
  
"You slept there?! Then its all the more reason you should spend at least one night in a proper bed," Meg good-naturedly threw Erik's own words back at him.  
  
"What do you think I have done for the last week thanks to you, my tyrannical young nurse?"  
  
"You don't have to sleep on the floor. I can make it home all right -"  
  
"At this hour and unescorted? I would not hear of it!"  
  
"I'm hardly a child, and I've made the trip alone hundreds of times before."  
  
"Paris is not safe at night, and men often have strange ideas about young ladies walking alone after dark. More so in this city. Megan, you may trust your safety to me, I will not violate it nor allow it to be violated."  
  
That was a surprise to Meg: Erik did actually care about her as a person.  
  
"Erik," she tried again, more gently this time and took his hand, resting her fingertips in the center of his palm. Erik almost seemed to jump: he seemed to shrink from physical contact whenever it was possible for him to do so and had not allowed her to touch him any more than absolutely necessary in the last week. Nor had he initiated their few contacts, but broke them as quickly as he could. "I'll be all right. I can get home safely."  
  
Erik's hand, cool and dry to her touch, wrapped slowly around her fingers and enveloped them completely. No pressure was exerted to hold her hand in his own, Erik held it as though it were a butterfly come to light on his palm, or some exquisitely beautiful and delicate snowflake. Meg had never realized how big his hands were, or maybe it was just a comparison to her own small, flame-shaped hands. When he spoke, his voice almost seemed raw: she could see his throat working below his half-ravaged face while he found the words he was looking for.  
  
"I would be remiss as a gentleman, as a host and as a friend if I allowed you to walk home through Paris at this hour alone and without an escort. I am concerned that you would not be safe but I do not feel that I can provide that escort for you at this time and would not be comfortable in trusting your safety to a hansom driver. Meg," he said, and his soft voice dropped to a whisper. "Enough people have been hurt by the actions I have taken. Please do not let me see you come to harm by an action I did not take and should have, I do not think I could bear that. Stay here tonight."  
  
What could Meg say to an entreaty like that? It was more than she had ever expected to hear from Erik before, as though the walls that Christine had knocked down were only partially repaired but the damage had been hidden by a fog that only now blew away. It was the man, wounded and vulnerable but trying hard to trust, who looked out through those dark eyes at Meg from atop those half-demolished defenses. Caught between what he both wanted and feared, he still had made the offer. Meg smiled with understanding: what a dilemma for this man to be caught in!  
  
"I will see Maman tomorrow, I can let her know I'm safe then, I suppose. A woman is definitely needed here, anyway," Meg said lightly. The little dancer watched a certain tension leave Erik's shoulders and frame. {{ So that wasn't just a sense of responsibility behind that offer. He cares. There's no getting around it, for some reason he cares. }} "Thank you."  
  
"You're welcome, Mademoi- Megan," he said softly, staring at their hands together. "You're welcome here at any time, day or night."  
  
Silence stretched between them. Neither moved, unwilling to break this quiet moment. "You're blushing," the dancer whispered with a smile teasing the corners of her lips after a few minutes.  
  
"No more than you, little Meg," he replied just as softly, his tone carrying a little bit of mingled awe and disbelief.  
  
It was true and undeniable. Both of them had caught the other red-handed or, as it were, red-faced. Erik broke this second silence with a wry chuckle and released her hand. "There is a fair amount of comedic value in this situation, wouldn't you agree? The end of the matter is this, Meg: regardless of the condition it is in, this is still my house and I will not have a guest sleep on the floor under my roof."  
  
There was nothing for it, Meg decided: the tone Erik used had that touch of steel in it that said he was not kidding this time. So Meg pulled a chemise and dressing gown from Christine's wardrobe here, gasping at the array of fine clothing before her, and ducked into the bathroom to change. Meanwhile, just beyond the closed bathroom door she could hear Erik setting out a few blankets on the Persian carpets, though they probably would not be needed. He seemed to be humming something: with a little effort she placed the tune as "The Dance of the Country Nymphs" from 'Il Muto.' It carried the distinction of being the ballet that had immediately followed Carlotta's infamous croak, but it was a light and bouncing tune and it sounded as though Erik was in fairly good spirits. Certainly better than she had expected from him, given the news she had had to break.  
  
Shrugging out of the dress - one of her own this time - Meg slipped the soft pink satin over her head. "Consider them yours," he had said. Had he given up on Christine entirely? The man had nearly died for losing her, and now he was giving away what he had obviously taken care to gather for her to another? Most disturbing in the whole picture was his apparent calm. The dancer could not believe that such a studied indifference was anything less than a masterful act. [[ I should think I've learned something about acting after so many years as a ballet dancer in an opera house! ]]  
  
When the young dancer tied the sash on the dressing gown and stepped out into the bedroom, she found that a wooden brush and comb set had been laid out on the vanity for her along with a toothbrush and a full cup of water. The man who had set them there for her was nowhere to be found, though the blankets were laid at the foot of the boat-shaped bed where the footboard might provide some privacy. She smiled at Erik's thoughtfulness and stepped back into the bathroom.  
  
"I would trust the lake water for drinking before anything that passes through the pipes here," he had told her three nights ago. "The lake is fed by an underground river well below the bottom of the casing and drains off as easily. The pipes. well, I have not yet managed to find a way to clean out the kilometers of piping out with any efficiency from here sufficiently that I would care to drink from them, so I use that water only for bathing."  
  
Quickly she brushed her teeth and rinsed the brush, dumping the remains of the water into the drain of the bathtub. Cream-colored polished marble it was, with rich streaks of dark brown through it. So cunningly were the tiles cut and fitted together that Meg could not find their edges by touch or by sight, the chocolate streaks through the stone were all matched up and aligned perfectly. She spared another marveling glance at the bath, finer than any she had dreamed outside of a palace, and stepped back out to brush her hair.  
  
By the time she was finished, Erik had not yet come back from wherever he had gone. Quickly slipping into a pair of slippers she also found by the vanity, she hurried through the gutted remains of his home to the ruined front door. The object of her search stood by the lake, looking out into the darkness of the cavern as though it held some secret he alone could divine and only by patience. "Erik?" she called softly. He half-turned towards her. "You should come in. I still don't intend for you to die of chill and if you'll catch it anyplace it's out here." He still hadn't donned even one of the shirts she had brought for him, Meg noted with some exasperation, and pulled the dressing gown tighter about her to ward off the chill.  
  
"Go to sleep, little Meg," Erik said, his voice drifting gently to her ears. "I will be inside in a short while."  
  
Meg nodded and padded back to the warm bedroom. {{ Likely enough he just needs time to think. What with my mother-henning him, I'd not be surprised if he feels a bit trapped. And after having the whole city to wander, being kept in one room has to have been a strain on his patience. }} When she saw the pallet of blankets made up on the floor, she smiled wryly. {{ He still shouldn't be out of bed. And I'll be damned if he sleeps on the floor after wandering around out there! }} Grinning playfully, she tucked herself into the soft blankets on the floor and let her breathing slow. She was thinking of his large, pale, elegant hands playing the piano and wondering if he would be able to repair the wreck the mob had left behind when she fell asleep, the playful smile still clear on her countenance.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Erik laid the blankets down, readying a spot on the floor at the foot of the bed to sleep. Meg was in the bathroom changing for bed. He picked up the second cup from where it sat next to the first on the nightstand - Meg had brought this one from home as she had brought so much already - and carried it out. It was only a moment to wash it in the clean, dark waters of the lake and he left it next to the brushes on the vanity before walking back outside. He needed to think and to walk freely outside: he barely noticed the desolation that had once been the inside of his home.  
  
Truth of it was, Erik was glad she'd decided to accept his offer and stay the night. He could not and would not force her to stay with him and, had she pressed the issue, he would have dressed and escorted her home. But he really was concerned for the girl's safety: she was the first person who had seen past the defenses he put up. [[ A wise old soul she is, for her years. ]] It was the first time in Erik's forty-four years that kindness had been extended to him without any thought of recompense and it stirred warmer, softer feelings in his chest and in his gut than even Christine's lovely voice had. Music had always been all he needed, but she was also a harsh taskmistress and seldom gave back more than a promise.  
  
[[ Ah, Music. Sweet Euterpe, Muse of Music, I seem to have much more in common with dark Pan or with your nephew Orpheus than with bright Apollo, your teacher. Must I always be this cross between them, not of the sunlight but always alone in my cave, caught in the twilight of Hades' realm without my singing Eurydice? And yet even bright Apollo was refused, though I can hope for no such miracle. But I have not even a branch of my laurel to hold to, only your mother's legacy of memories. And my Eurydice was stolen away by a snake with golden hair. Why did she go so willingly? Why did the Fates take her from me? ]]  
  
Caught by this melancholy mood, it was several moments before Erik realized he hadn't yet dressed, and the cold air of the fifth cellar, a massive, manmade cavern, left his bare skin feeling clammy and prickly with goosebumps. [[ And a young woman in the room with me all that time. Where are my manners getting to? ]]  
  
But the man knew the answer to that before he asked the question. [[ I am comfortable with Megan Giry in a way I never was with Christine Daae. She was always my Angel - still is my untouchable Angel of Music - but I had to walk so carefully with her. I did not willingly strip her of her naïvete, but I could never have allowed myself the kind of freedom that I have with Meg. The laughs that she and I have shared over each others' slips, Christine would never have understood. She was too innocent. Christine saw my face and ran back to her Vicomte. Meg saw my face when she pulled me from the chair that would have been my grave, and she didn't care. She came back again and again to nurse me back to life. ]]  
  
Erik wondered if Christine would have shown him the same level of caring that Meg had shown him. The memory of the shock and horror that painted the ingenue's face upon discovering his own was all the answer he needed. She would not have, and possibly could not have. In her own way, she was as selfish as La Carlotta, even if she lacked the cruel calculation of the diva's mind behind her acts. Erik had given his young protegèe everything he possibly could and in the end, it had been too much, and not enough. The last plunge downward had come about in large part because he had nothing left for himself. Meg's care and friendly company now was a healing balm to his soul.  
  
[[ I wonder if she understands now when I felt for her. What I still feel for her. Oh, Christine, be happy where you are. I could not bear it if you came back into my life now. Let me remember you as my beautiful, innocent Angel of Music. ]]  
  
Meg's voice interrupted his reflections and, half-turning, he caught sight of her slim, short form in the wreckage that had once been his front door. She was shivering in that thin dressing gown, he realized. [[ And little Meg has the nerve to tell me to dress? I've lived down here for years! ]] But the thought carried no rancor and he told her as gently as he could that he would definitely return. It was a slight surprise that she retreated as quickly as she did. [[ But she is not stupid, she is merely young, and not naïve. Can I tell her, then, about what has happened? I see the questions in her eyes every time she allows her gaze to linger on these scars. ]] Unconsciously his fingers traced the long, lone scars that raced up and down his forearms. [[ I do not ask for her pity or anyone else's. And I do not ask her to understand why or how anyone can hate just on the basis of one's appearance, I do not understand that myself. Some things, ]] he thought with a touch of resignation, [[ simply are beyond my capability to understand.  
  
[[ Athena, mistress of battle and tactics, protectress of heroes. Goddess of wisdom. Women seem to have a different sort of wisdom than men, perhaps that is why I seek my solace among the fairer gender. Men seek out wisdom in the books their fellows wrote: women seem to find it within themselves, at least more easily than men do. I could certainly use your aid now, if you are willing to give it. ]]  
  
When he made his way back in, the destruction began to impress itself upon him. So many memories in the furnishings that lay around, scattered carelessly except where Meg had started to tidy up. What wasn't scorched or chewed on by vermin was damaged by the permanent damp and mold. He had to see the remains of the organ, though, and picked his way to the room that had once been home to it, his inner sanctum.  
  
When he emerged, it was with a darkness on his brow for the invasion of his home and shining patches under his eyes for the demolition of his beloved music and the organ that he had taken such pains to keep in pristine condition. But there had been a gleam of hope there as well.  
  
His beautiful pipe organ, the one belonging he would have traded almost anything for, that had seen him safely through so many crises. the organ could be repaired. He had wept when the understanding hit him. It would be difficult, and it would never sound quite as perfect as it had before, but it could be repaired with time and patience. It was with relief that he slipped silently into Christine's - no, Meg's room, now and prepared to go to bed.  
  
Relief changed into astonishment, a touch of frustration and an overwhelming amusement when he looked down at the heap that was curled up inside the blankets he had thought to use!  
  
[[ Meg, if you were the daughter of anyone other than Isabelle Giry, I might call you a tease. Knowing you as briefly as I do, though, I am more willing to guess that this is your way of just being obstinate. Of course, in that case you shouldn't have fallen asleep. However, this is my opera house and my home beneath it, and I am not allowing a woman under my roof to sleep on the floor. ]]  
  
Erik folded back the rumpled sheets on the boat-shaped bed and returned to scoop the sleeping girl up in his arms, blankets and all. He was surprised at how little she weighed even to his somewhat deteriorated strength. It was no effort at all for the former Opera Ghost to carry the little cocoon the few steps to the bed and lay her down. [[ Apologies, Mademoiselle, in advance. I think I may want those blankets myself, those are all that are clean and you have the quilt. ]] Carefully he unwound his sleeping charge from the blankets that she had somehow twined around herself, trying hard not to look or to touch her. He caught a glimpse of her leg, bared nearly to the hip, before he laid the sheets and the heavy down-filled quilt over her to tuck her in. Permitting himself to brush one golden curl away from her peaceful face, secretly admiring the graceful curve of her lips and the way her hand rested against the pillow, he smiled back at her. "Thank you," he whispered, and gathered up the still-warm blankets to bed down himself.  
  
It was with a grateful sigh that he stripped off his trousers and curled up in the blankets, enjoying the lingering traces of Meg's body heat and the scent of her shampoo - roses, it was one of the few indulgences she allowed herself on her meager dancer's salary. Very quickly, Erik too fell asleep.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Meg thought it was a sound from her dream.  
  
"No - leave me alone - "  
  
As she came awake she realized it wasn't a dream. She was tucked into the big boat-shaped bed, which meant that Erik was on the floor. {{ Where I specifically told him he would not be sleeping tonight! Always the gentleman? }} And in another moment she realized that it was Erik himself who was crying out in his sleep.  
  
"Maman, help me..." he was calling. She could hear him moving restlessly, the blankets rustling on the carpeted floor. "Maman... hurts... don't touch..." His body shook as though he was being hit or kicked, Meg could trace each impact in his dream by the way he shuddered. Curled in a tight ball, even in his sleep Erik shielded the side of his face that was so horribly disfigured.  
  
Meg laid down behind Erik and embraced him protectively. "Shh. It's all right, Erik. You'll be all right, nobody's going to hurt you," she murmured in his ear. "Hush, now, you're safe, you're all right."  
  
Slowly the sleeping man calmed as she whispered, his breathing slower and deeper, eyes no longer darting around behind his closed eyelids. Meg took a moment to snuggle under the blankets since it didn't seem right to leave him alone at this point, and paused as Erik rolled in his sleep. His arm fitted right over her waist and the good side of his face pillowed itself against her breast. He hadn't seemed very heavy when she had pulled him out of the bottom of the black throne, but now his weight against her seemed almost crushing.  
  
{{ Oh my God, }} she thought, almost panicked. But careful examination proved that he was sound asleep. Meg wasn't sure what to do. Moving would most certainly wake him, which was the right thing to do anyway... this was just not proper at all! She wasn't a stranger to a man's embrace, very few of the petite rats were despite their taskmistress' harsh discipline, and she was old enough that Isabelle Giry could not do much more than grumble... But that was if anything happened. Meg had no experience with anything beyond a quick snuggle! She had to decide what she would do now, if anything did happen.  
  
When Erik seemed to have settled, though, Meg's pulse slowed. It was actually rather a comfort, she thought, to be held like this and before shutting her eyes she wrapped her arms around him again and rested her hands on Erik's back between his shoulder blades. {{ Not always the gentleman, it seems. Or is it just that I'm not a lady? }}  
  
"Sweet dreams, Erik," she whispered sleepily.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
. Don't ask, just review. Yes, you'll hear from Christine again soon! Tell me what you think, I'm still focusing on the trust between them since Meg's still a little skittish and Erik's still hurting. R&R? (The Muses are trying to hijack this again.)  
  
AngelCeleste85 


	10. Discoveries

Disclaimer: If I owned the Phantom of the Opera I'd have better things to do with all our time than write these stories. 0;-P~  
  
Warnings: If you can't take pure fluff and a little bit of mild language, don't even bother. Yes, Erik swears, but only in the privacy of his own mind.  
  
A/N: The characters don't much like Carlotta or her singing, but I don't mind it, I've heard worse (Roseanne Bar comes to mind). So I am not bashing Carlotta in this fic! :-P ::figures everyone is looking at her like she's gone off her rocker, figures they're probably at least partially right::  
  
Thank you to everyone for your comments, especially to Liz DM (I love you, Maman!) and to everyone who's sticking with an E/M even when they're not fans of it...  
  
I also apologize for how long it took to get this chapter out, I wasn't sure how I was going to work it until a few hours ago when I started it. I can usually manage to think my way out of the boxes I think myself into... sometimes it just takes a while. Anyway, sit back, relax and enjoy the fic!  
  
[[ Erik's thoughts ]] {{ Meg's thoughts }} // Isabelle Giry's thoughts //  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Lachesis' Weavings, Ch. 10 by AngelCeleste85  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Ch. 10 - Discoveries  
  
A gentle sound of a slow but strong and steady heartbeat brought Erik back to semi-consciousness, but not full wakefulness. His arm was around and over something that was warm and soft, his deformed cheek on something even softer and firm. He lay in a peaceful, contented state for several minutes.  
  
Then what he was lying on moved just a little bit. A thought, like a lightning bolt from the heavens, shocked the man to full awareness. [[ What the hell is going on? ]]  
  
He opened his eyes, praying it wasn't so...  
  
It was. Megan Giry's golden curls lay in a tousled mess atop the heap of blanket he had wadded up as a pillow. And Erik himself was pillowed...  
  
[[ Oh, shit. Christ, she's going to think I just crawled into bed with her. ]]  
  
As quickly as he could, Erik left the mound of blankets on the floor and hauled out the trousers he had cast into the corner of the room, quick to move where Meg would not see him fastening the pants if she happened to wake.  
  
Too late, he realized, as he looked around with his pants held at his waist, not yet fastened. Meg's emerald eyes, still fuzzed slightly by sleep, looked up at him from the floor.  
  
"Mademoiselle, I apologize." The words came tumbling out, he couldn't stop. [[ I have never felt like such a fool in my life! ]] "I don't know what to say, Megan, please understand, it's not what you're thinking - I never intended... Christ, I swear I did not intend... anything... of that sort... [[ I sound like a gibbering idiot. I need to get her out of here, double-time. ]] "Miss Giry, I think it might be best if you left."  
  
The dancer's eyebrows went up a little further with every word and she made no attempt to hide her grin at Erik's fumbling words. "And why is that? You still can't take care of yourself. Besides, no man can clean anything and those rooms need it badly."  
  
[[ The damn girl is going to bloody well make it difficult for me! ]] "I know you'll never believe this, Mademoiselle - I swear I did not try to sleep with you. I don't know how I ended up... there... I swear I tucked you into the bed first -" Erik turned away from the young woman, knowing the good half of his face was blazing red, and barely restrained himself from cutting free with several choice words in Farsi.  
  
"Erik -"  
  
"Please, Mademoiselle, please go."  
  
"Erik -" Meg tried again, rising and straightening her nightgown. She reached for the dressing-gown on the corner of the bed.  
  
"Just go, Mademoiselle, please! It's not what you think, I swear, but go!"  
  
Meg finished belting the gown around her waist and planted her feet, hands firmly placed on hips. {{ How does Maman get the other rats to be quiet? Something about the way she speaks, I think... }} She imagined herself as her mother and the man before her, whose whip-scarred back was turned towards her as he buried his face in a corner of the wall, as a boy of about five who had been caught red-handed with his hand in the cookie jar. The dancer raised her voice in the way she had heard Reyer teaching some of the more promising chorus girls: that meant straightening all the way and utilizing all the air from a full, deep breath and all the muscles in her diaphragm to project it. {{ I'm Maman, right after she's caught Sorelli in some corner with a boy! }}  
  
"Monsieur le Fantome, be silent, if you please, and listen!"  
  
Erik whirled to face her, eyes wide and nearly panicked. But he did not say a word.  
  
Meg shook her head a little. She had seen the man nine-tenths dead, she had seen him angry, she had once had to help him bathe, he had even fallen asleep in the same bed with her once already, but never before had she seen Erik this flustered before. Or quite that shade of red. And she was rather pleased that she'd been able to get Erik to listen.  
  
"Erik, I know it's not -" {{ Damn it. }} She started over. "I know you didn't intend anything. If anything, I should be the one apologizing. You were having a bad dream, it woke me up, so I held you. I guess I fell asleep, too., but I know you must have put me back in the bed because that's where I woke up. You didn't come sleep with me, I slept with you!" Meg couldn't quite make that admission with a straight face, though. {{ Oh Maman would have my ears if she could, but Sorelli would be rolling on the floor laughing! }}  
  
The former Opera Ghost seemed thunderstruck and, in a rare but purely unguarded moment Meg read shock, amazement, anger - and then suddenly it all dissolved into hilarity as Erik's knees gave out from under him and he collapsed, sliding down the wall as his chuckle boomed out into the room and gave way to full-fledged chortles. She was laughing too, she realized: it was just too funny. The petite rat made her way around the bed to Erik's sitting form - they were both laughing so hard they were crying.  
  
When both of them had recovered far enough to be able to look at one another without bursting into another round, Meg had an idea. "I guess that settles sleeping arrangements, then."  
  
Which of course set them both off again.  
  
Finally Erik sobered, though he did not bother to hide the smile on his face as he rose and helped little Meg to her feet. When her arms snaked around him, he didn't reject the embrace. "I guess it does at that, if you would be comfortable with that arrangement. Though I shudder to consider what your mother would do."  
  
Meg shrugged. "She'd try to have my ears, but I think she likes you too much to try anything of the kind on you."  
  
Erik chuckled again, golden eyes sparkling with the mirth that had been reawakened in him at last. "I do not know, a dancer without ears would have difficulty hearing the music to stay in time to it. As for me, she would have to find me, first, and nobody will have your ears without my having a say in it. But come, if I remember aright, 'Il Muto' opens again tonight. Who has the leads?"  
  
"Carlotta plays the Countess, and since there's no understudy for - well, Reyer himself is taking the lead tenor."  
  
"Oh, lords, gods and minor deities! That pair will be awful enough that it might just be amusing! Carlotta croaks from time to time, true, but Reyer croaks all the time!"  
  
"So it's a matched duet. But... you're not. going to do anything, are you?"  
  
Erik looked at the girl who had released him by now and was standing by the armoire looking for a dress. "Do anything? I might go see if Box Five is still clear, but there will be no falling chandeliers tonight or any other night. The Opera Ghost is dead."  
  
Meg paused in her rummaging and her head became visible again from around the door. Her green eyes gave him that piercing stare again, as if weighing him.  
  
"Then is this Erik that I see now?"  
  
Erik nodded slowly. "I never was an Angel to anyone but - Christine - and that ended a long time ago. The Phantom of the Opera is at peace and will not come back. There's only Erik here now, though he still responds to the other name out of habit."  
  
Meg's eyes were hooded somewhat. "What happened? With Buquet, I mean? And Piangi?"  
  
Erik hesitated, but she had the right to know. "I do not know if you will believe me, Mademoiselle - Meg, but the truth is, I was behind the backdrops when Buquet fell. Remember that his position meant that he was supposed to be in the rafters during a performance anyway. I think that he saw me and wanted to frighten me off without disrupting the performance any further, but he slipped and fell to the stage instead. I never touched him. I know he told stories about me and that annoys me, but I never planned to harm the man."  
  
"And Piangi?"  
  
Erik recognized a test when he smelled one, and this was unmistakably a test of honesty. And, htough it hurt that she questioned his integrity so openly, he had to admit that he wouldn't trust himself, either. "He would have died if he had not been taken so completely by surprise. It was not necessary to kill him, so I hit him on the head. Perhaps a little harder than I intended, but I wanted to be sure that he would not interfere... and if you recall, by the script I was somewhat rushed for time. And he is not a bad singer, after all, when the opera is in Italian. Though he mangles French badly and his German is worse."  
  
Meg smiled. Both of his stories checked out - Piangi had been released from the hospital only two days before.  
  
"I believe you - Erik."  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
"Il Muto" opened once more as a resounding success. Carlotta performed as she never had before and erased the ignominy in everyone's mind of the memory of the last performance, when her celebrated crystal voice had broken so horribly into a toad's croaking. And Meg managed to stay in step this time, though it was a ballet that she did have trouble with. The applause was thunderous, the stage trembled beneath the feet of the cast as they took their final bows, and Carlotta sang two encores.  
  
Box Five remained unsold, much to the chagrin and annoyance of the managers.  
  
At last Meg made her tired way to the corps' dressing room. Madame Giry was waiting for them there.  
  
"On the whole, nicely done, girls," she said, and the rats beamed. Isabelle Giry was the harshest taskmistress the Opera Garnier's ballet corps had ever seen and was exceedingly sparing with her praise. Only a moment later, though, the judgment they all feared crashed down. "Sorelli, I want to see your slippers. If you smudged them I will have you placed with the seamstresses during performances for the next week, and you will run from the first cellar to the rooftop during the day until I tell you otherwise, you should know to take better care of your slippers than that! Jammes, show me again how to do a proper plissee, that was disgraceful! Tanya, Carmina, to the barre, now. You too, Jammes! If you cannot dance better than that I see no reason to keep you in the corps! The rest of you, dismissed. Have a good night, all of you, rest well. I will see you all here again at nine in the morning sharp. Anyone who is half a second late will scrub the pissoires with their toothbrushes for the next two weeks!"  
  
Meg didn't doubt the ballet mistress' threats: she'd had to serve enough of them. Isabelle Giry was as hard on the newest rat as she was on Sorelli, but she was three times as fierce with her daughter.  
  
Wearily she made her way to her lock-closet... and paused.  
  
In the same slot as she had found the invitation to Christine's wedding to the Vicomte, she found a light pink rose, half-opened. It was fresh: there were water droplets on the petals. With it was a note on the fine white parchment, written in charcoal.  
  
"You were wonderful tonight, cherie."  
  
There was no signature, but Meg was certain she knew who had delivered the blossom. She sniffed deeply at the flower and smiled, her eyes closed.  
  
"Ooh, look what Meg has!" squealed one of the youngest rats, Marie. Instantly she was surrounded by more than half the corps.  
  
"Who's it from, Meg?  
  
"Oh, how romantic - is he going to sweep you off your feet like the Comte de Chagny does with Sorelli?  
  
"Is he tall, dark and handsome?"  
  
Meg smiled and told them what they wanted to hear, that she had no idea who it was from, but maybe he was "tall, dark and handsome" and maybe he really would come in one day and sweep her off her feet. Somehow, she had the feeling Erik was hearing every word and laughing: it was a warm feeling she had.  
  
It was fully an hour before she was able to set the rose down long enough to change without fear of it - she had hidden the note - being swiped by the other girls. She pulled on a dark cloak over the much-patched dress, picked up the parcel the two, dropped seemingly carelessly onto the bottom of the locker, had concealed, and sneaked her way down towards Christine Daae's old dressing room and the darkness of the fifth cellar below.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Isabelle Giry was walking as quickly as she could down the corridor, meaning to get to the rats' dressing room to speak with Meg. The news that Meg had gotten a pink rose - no, a red one - no, it was a dozen red roses from some tall, dark, handsome noble who was going to come in and propose to Meg - no, carry her off like the Opera Ghost did with Christine Daae - no, marry her right there on stage next performance whether she wanted it or not (they seemed to forget the necessity of a priest, or maybe it was all already arranged without Meg's knowledge - no with her full cooperation!) - had certainly caught the ballet teachers' attention.  
  
// Although certainly they are exaggerating. In one hour I have heard so many different versions that I find it impossible to sort out the truth. If not, I will need to have a serious talk with Meg, I will not have her running off in the middle of a season with some man without a word to me! And Miss Daae did the same, they say - except that she was running off with two men... that's still a scandal here. Even knowing what happened, I still can't //  
  
So it was with no small amount of surprise that the older woman saw a cloaked and hooded figure slipping noiselessly down the hallway with a very large package in her arms. The figure was slipping off towards - // Miss Daae's dressing room. Why there? And why with a package - //  
  
The older Giry stopped in her tracks. The cloaked figure didn't seem to have noticed her, but was hurrying on without a pause. // Could it be? Is that Meg, and going to the cellars? But why? And why with a package? //  
  
Pulling her shawl more tightly around her thin, black-clad shoulders, the older Giry followed the figure she was certain was her daughter down the backstage corridors of the Opera Garnier.  
  
~*~*~  
  
Meg rushed down the corridor as quickly as she dared in the dim red light of the dark lantern and found Erik waiting for her at the edge of the lake. He had found one of his boats, a narrow craft like a gondola, with a long, long pole. Clad in clothes that Meg had managed to smuggle down to him, he wore his mask again. Only out of habit, it seemed, for his eyes lit up with an undisguised warmth the moment he heard her rapid footfalls and he rose to greet her.  
  
"I was beginning to wonder if you would be able to come tonight," the masked man murmured as Meg embraced him. "I trust the rats were not too troublesome about your present?" he added as he took the dark lantern from Meg and placed it onto a hook on the front of the boat.  
  
Meg laughed. "I thought it was you behind that. Thank you, it was beautiful, and a lovely surprise! And they let me go after only an hour of questions-"  
  
Erik held a finger to her lips, silencing her. His keen hearing had picked up the sound of footsteps. "Someone's coming," he whispered. "I can't hide the boat, and I can't get us out of sight before they get here."  
  
Meg listened, and now she could hear the approach as well but her ears had to be deceiving her. The only person who walked with that gait - the distinctive "click-click-tap, click-click-tap" was.  
  
The person came around the corner, and both the rose and the parcel dropped from Meg's nerveless hand.  
  
"Maman."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Tell me what you think, please?  
  
AngelCeleste85  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
In the Language of Flowers, well-known in Europe in the Victorian era, almost all roses meant love of some kind. A light pink rose signaled friendship and deeper shades a romantic interest. Half-opened meant it was just beginning, a bud meant there was potential for whatever the color of the bud signified. (Red roses meant a sexual interest, and now you know where the Valentine's tradition of long-stemmed roses comes from, it's probably one of the last common holdovers from the Language of Flowrs still in use today. Go read my fic "Speech of Flowers" for more information there if you're interested.) 


	11. Revelations

Disclaimer/Blame: Not mine, but all mine. 8-P  
  
A/N: Oh dear. The dreaded moment when the guy meets her parents... except Erik fortunately only has Madame Giry to worry about. Or is he getting the short end of that trade?  
  
::devours her feedback in one gigantic bite:: Yum! ::belches:: Thank you to Mystery Guest, Phantom Aria, BW and my own dear Maman for all your wonderful comments and for your patience with me in getting this story up! I consider it a massive compliment that so many E/C fans are enjoying what I can say with certainty now is most definitely an E/M... thank you everyone!  
  
Liz D-M, this chapter is for you - some of the miscommunications possible between a mother and her almost-grown daughter come through here, and maybe a bit of their love for each other as well... I don't think I have a tall, dark and handsome man slipping roses into my locker, but all the same - Maman, I love you!  
  
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"Lachesis' Weavings" by AngelCeleste85  
  
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Chapter 11 - Revelations  
  
The figure, clad in black almost as dark as the shadows except for where her pale face and hands gleamed, emerged from the darkness of the tunnel.  
  
"It seems the rumors are at least partially true, a tall dark man running off with my daughter," Isabelle Giry said wryly.  
  
Meg winced. This was not at all the way she had hoped to tell her mother! "Maman, don't be mad - it's not like that at all -"  
  
"I am not angry, dear. But I do wish you had told me before making this decision."  
  
"Maman, I'm not running off anywhere."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
Erik stepped forward, a silent shadow behind the ballet dancer, his hand unconsciously resting on Meg's shoulder. "Good evening to you, Madame," he said gravely.  
  
Isabelle only nodded. "Monsieur le Fantome. I might have guessed when I caught Meg sneaking down the corridors. You could not have Christine so you turn your attentions to her friend?"  
  
"No, Madame. She came to me, not I to her."  
  
It seemed the older woman's brows were about to climb to her receding hairline. "Well, this sounds like it will be quite the tale. However, this damp and chill is unkind to an old woman's joints. Shall we go somewhere that is warmer?"  
  
Erik removed the lantern from the boat. "Madame, I would invite you to my home, but as yet it is in no condition to again receive guests."  
  
"I was under the impression that you considered the entire Opera your home and property, Monsieur le Fantome."  
  
Erik was silent to that as he led them back up the corridor. Isabelle trailed him, Meg under her arm. The only sounds were those of their footsteps, the elder Giry's cane, and the squeaks of rats. Meg could barely see Erik as a silhouette against the dim red light he carried aloft for them all. Soon they came to Christine's abandoned dressing room and the shattered mirror-door.  
  
Meg took one look at her mother's face and her heart sank. This was not going to be an easy interview, or amusing. By her face, the ballet mistress was wishing that she had Erik in the corps, as well, just to make him jump when she said as well. Soundlessly, the girl tried a few of the drawers at the vanity before finding what she was looking for. There was nothing to trim the wick with, so Meg just touched it to the flame inside the now-unshuttered dark lantern. Light filled the room, and she set the candle in a holder on the vanity's top beside the inkwell, the quill pen and a vase with a single red rose, long since dead and withered.  
  
Erik was looking at the rose, she realized. {{ Was it one he gave to her? }} He seemed expressionless, but she had had so much time recently to talk to him and study him, she was almost certain there was something to it. {{ I'll keep my nose short, I think. He's still so hurt about Christine. }}  
  
Isabelle took the vanity's stool, motioning her daughter to sit on the bed facing her. Erik remained standing where he was, habitually drawn back into the deepest shadow he could find, not that there were many within the room itself with a candle lit and the lantern unshuttered. Meg looked down at the floor and realized then how lucky she was that nobody had yet chanced across her quick jury-rig on the doorway's appearance from the main corridor: a fine layer of dust had settled here and her shoes had disturbed it many times. It was just barely noticeable, but it was all the same.  
  
Old Madame Giry had seen this as well. "So, would either of you mind enlightening me? Meg, you say that the rumors I hear are not true. If not, then what is? How long have you been sneaking down - after rehearsals, I presume - to meet with him?"  
  
She took a deep breath as she steeled herself for her mother's reaction. "I was worried about him, Maman."  
  
"Worried? About someone who kills for spite, for jealousy. A man who bullies the managers into running the theatre his way, extorts an outrageous salary from them. Who stalks the girls he fixes his mad obsession upon until they are driven nearly insane. And who hides so well within this building that for years nobody could track down the source of the rumors. You were worried for him?"  
  
Meg couldn't help shooting a glance at Erik. He seemed unmoved, but... no, there was a distinct hardness to his eyes, twin amber flames in the shadows of his face, and to the set of his strong jaw. He was angry, no doubt about it.  
  
Come to think of it, so was she. This had been a topic that they had not touched in the weeks since, and it seemed that it was about to come out now.  
  
"Yes, Maman, I was worried for him! You weren't with the mob, Maman, you didn't go with them. They would have killed him, Maman! Didn't you know that?"  
  
Isabelle sat back, thunderstruck.  
  
"So it was you." Erik's whisper sounded like steel being drawn from a leather sheath. "You showed them the way down, just like you showed the Vicomte."  
  
"Not quite. I was not able to help you directly and I apologize for that, Monsieur," the old ballet teacher said quietly, "but I could not stand by while you did to another woman what once you stopped from happening to me."  
  
"I would never have harmed her," Erik returned. To Meg, who was thoroughly lost, it seemed as though the masked man was trying to burn a hole through her mother with his glare.  
  
"Would someone please explain this to me?" she asked.  
  
The question seemed to freeze the air in the room. Finally Erik shrugged.  
  
"If I said anything, it would sound like boasting," was all he said, a tacit way of telling the old woman "You tell her."  
  
Isabelle sighed. "Do you recall, during the production of 'Robert le Diable' about five years ago, when I came home and you said that I looked like I'd rolled in an alley?"  
  
"How could I forget that, Maman, you only caned me for that remark until I couldn't sit comfortable for a week."  
  
"Which I should not have done, and as I recall I apologized about that." Her tone was brisker, her words more clipped now. "I never told you what happened, but I may as well now. I was walking home from a late meeting with the managers, as a matter of fact, and I was tired. I decided, more fool I, to turn through an alley as a shorter way to get home. A group of half-drunk men attacked me and tried to have their way with me. That man in the corner there pulled them off of me. Three of them died, and the last two are likely still running."  
  
It was Meg's turn to be shocked. "I never... never suspected - But you should have gone to warn him, then, and instead you betrayed him!"  
  
"Silence, child, when you do not know everything! I did consider it both ways - openly aiding him, and betraying him each, and every possibility between. On the surface of it, I should have helped, you are correct there. But - I could not allow him to force himself on Christine. The Vicomte had to be there. I do not believe that one capable of rape under most circumstances, but I would not put it past him in a temper and I know of nothing as liable to put a man into a jealous rage as the thought that another man might be interested in the one he himself has chosen. If nothing else, the Vicomte had to be there to provide Christine with the choice." That, with a sideways glance at the man who leaned, arms crossed over his chest, in the corner. "My choice, I pray, has harmed as few as possible."  
  
"That very nearly backfired," Erik put in coldly. "And may yet still, though in a different manner." The tone of voice made Meg shiver, it was suspiciously close to the voice that had laughed with such malice during the last production of "Il Muto" when the Phantom...  
  
The Phantom. So the Opera Ghost was not entirely dead, after all.  
  
Isabelle Giry had not seemed to notice, though. "I did not think it would then. But, far from giving them directions, I delayed the mob that went seeking your life, Monsieur le Fantome."  
  
"I heard you telling them the way!" Meg said, no longer content to sit. "I was right there in the middle of the group where you wouldn't see me, and I heard you tell them three rights, two lefts, take the left fork, down two flights of stairs..."  
  
"And the directions I gave were wrong, deliberately so. The directions I gave brought them around to the wrong side of the lake. I suppose I need not ask why you were in the mob to begin with - concern for him?"  
  
"For both of them, actually," Meg muttered sullenly, sitting down again, her face flushing.  
  
[[ For both of them. Which "both?" I assume Christine was one of "them," but you did not know the Phantom of the Opera then. ]]  
  
"Do you see now why I am so concerned for you when you do not come home at night?" Isabelle asked a trifle more gently. "The Paris streets are not safe, you can meet all sorts of riffraff there." A double-edged remark, though Meg was ashamed that she had heard it. Erik's jaw tightened still further. "I do not mind admitting, this man saved my life that night. I tried to give him as much opportunity as I could to let him save his own without ruining Christine's and the Vicomte's in return. And that, child, is very much off the topic."  
  
"You are very much mistaken, Madame," the Phantom's voice, as cool as the air flowing past them from the mirror, replied to Isabelle. "If you think that I honestly would have harmed Christine then, or Meg now, you are far more mistaken than you realize! Whatever else I have been and done, I have never, ever, forced myself upon a woman.  
  
"Nor did I kill Buquet, or Piangi. Meg already knows, but I could not have touched Buquet from where I was, not did I tamper with his safety equipment. His death was purely an accident. Piangi, I did not want to kill, nor did I."  
  
Cool and controlled up to this point, the Phantom was losing his hold on the man's voice and Erik came through once more, unconsciously gathering heat as he spoke. "My concern for Mademoiselle Megan now is as a friend. She is the first person to have seen me without my mask and not tried to run away. Whether or not she ran and vomited in the lake while I was unconscious, I do not know, nor do I care. She still came back and saved my life: she nursed me back to health and gave me a reason to live when I would not have otherwise given a damn. I owe her my life and should she need anything from me, she has only to say the word. I will die before I see her hurt."  
  
"You do not mention the chandelier."  
  
"Must I account to you for every accident that has occurred in my presence since my birth?" Erik nearly shouted. "The chandelier was not me, either - do you honestly think I would have risked any hurt to Christine? The damned thing came down of its own accord! What I would not give to be a safety inspector just to be able to boot those fools out of their office myself..."  
  
Almost beside himself, Erik ripped off his mask: Isabelle recoiled, her face pale and her eyes wide. "Look at me, Madame! I am a man, not a monster, however much I look like one! Your daughter saw that where Christine failed to, where I myself had forgotten! Do not think that, because I look like a monster on the outside, I must be a monster inside as well! I have faced that for fifty long, lonely years. I will not hear it now. I am not a monster, I am only a man! No more, no less!"  
  
Erik turned, dropping the mask, and buried his face in a corner of the walls. Isabelle stood, but Meg beat her to the man's side, ignoring the fallen mask and stroking his back through the borrowed white shirt as he wept silently. Isabelle watched in silence as her daughter soothed the older man, whispering silently to him.  
  
The petite rat herself was amazed by the sheer force of the emotions that drove Erik. {{ He would die to protect me? }}  
  
"Well then, would you mind telling me how long this has been going on." It was not a question, however worded.  
  
"A week and a half. I came down the first day that the gendarmes were gone, after rehearsal."  
  
"I take it that this is where my husband's old clothing has gotten to, not to mention my spare pot? For that matter, Meg, how have you been feeding him?"  
  
Meg stopped, seeing that Erik was somewhat settled. "I was using my savings."  
  
Erik, who had taken advantage of Meg's sudden pause, swiped at his face and donned his mask once more. "I will see that you are repaid, Meg, for your time and money."  
  
"You?" Isabelle scoffed, though perhaps not as hard as she might have only ten minutes before. "I saw the things that were lifted from your home. Maybe you had money three weeks ago, but I doubt you would have enough now to repay the food!"  
  
Erik faced old Giry squarely. "Madame, your daughter is my friend, and it is for her sake and the sake of memory that I restrain my temper now. Give me some credit that is rightfully mine, at least, I am neither street pauper nor complete fool."  
  
"Are you saying that you could provide for my daughter?" Giry's brows were raised as she took in the borrowed attire, the sleek porcelain mask and his clean but still slightly shaggy hair.  
  
The former Phantom tensed, he knew well the implications of that question. [[ Good grief, she is as bad as the Daroga. I suppose this is what I get for calling upon the goddesses, a woman nosing into my private affairs? ]]  
  
"As I said, should Meg need anything, she has only to say the word. I do not seek her hand, nor indeed anything she does not choose to give to me of her own free will. I am content with her friendship. I believe it may go without saying that she has mine."  
  
To his surprise, the old ballet mistress nodded slowly. "What are your plans for the Opera then, Monsieur le Fantome?"  
  
"Erik, please."  
  
"Erik, then. What are you planning for the Opera now?"  
  
There seemed to be a note of longing or wistfulness in his voice now. "I have no plans to harass them further, Carlotta can sing as often and as badly as she likes." [[ They can go to hell for all I care. Though I do intend to see that Andre and Firmin do not forget their Ghost's salary. ]] "I may watch from Box Five, if they continue to leave it unsold, but if not I can always watch from other hidey-holes."  
  
"You should be trying to get that mess down there tidied," Meg chided playfully.  
  
"What, you expect me to do that all myself?" He sighed theatrically with a glance to Madame Giry and shook his head. "Good help is so hard to find these days." Erik found himself having to quickly sidestep an elbow to the ribs from his laughing young friend.  
  
Madame Giry smiled at their byplay. "Very well," she said at last. "It is not as though I can stop you, Meg, from visiting him. Monsieur - Erik. Erik, I expect that she will be home at nights, unless you have accommodations for her in your home?"  
  
"Accommodations can be found for Meg," Erik replied smoothly enough. "If she would rather go back home at nights, I will send her home with you until I am fully capable of providing an escort for her."  
  
"You could try talking to me and not over my head," Meg muttered dryly.  
  
"In this case, Megan, he is correct. Thank you, Monsieur Erik, for seeing to my daughter's safety. You may hold onto the borrowed items for as long as you need them, though I should like my spare pot back soon. And - Erik?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
Madame Giry's dark eyes met Erik's squarely. "I will not betray your secret, so long as Meg and the Opera remain unharmed."  
  
The threat was plain - old Giry did not trust the man who was still whispered about as the feared Opera Ghost. Erik nodded. "They will remain safe."  
  
Giry nodded, and stepped forward to her daughter. Quickly she planted a kiss on Meg's forehead, more than she had done even in private for a long time, and held her. "Megan, Megan, you have always been so headstrong. I do not know what the two of you do down there in the cellars and I will not ask. Just promise me that you will not do anything you would not want to tell your mother about, non?"  
  
The dancer smiled and hugged her mother back. "I promise, Maman. Thank you... for not trying to force me away from a friend."  
  
"It never does work when I try it, I should know that by now. Will I see you at home tonight?"  
  
"I think I will see if I can help Erik clean up his home for a few days. There's one useable room and he won't let me sleep on the floor even though I'm more used to it, not to mention the kitchen is about gone and I'm cooking meals in what left of the living room fireplace."  
  
The old woman sighed, long and heavy. "All right. But be on time in the morning, or bring a toothbrush. I will see if I can leave some things around that might help you two to clean house. Sleep well."  
  
// My daughter is growing up. I can no longer protect her from everything as I would have even two weeks ago. Megan... be careful. //  
  
With those words, the elderly woman made her way to the door and checked the corridor behind for sounds before easing it open. The door sounded its close with a creak and a click, and they listened to Madame Giry's steps making their familiar "click-click-tap" down the hall.  
  
Meg smiled gently at Erik. "That went well, I think."  
  
"Better than I expected, though not as well as I hoped. You said she liked me!"  
  
Meg giggled just a little. "She does. That's why you got off that lightly. You should have heard her when the Baron d'Orsay tried courting me two years ago."  
  
"You will need to inform me of this, I do not believe I remember hearing about that particular interview," Erik chuckled, pinching out the candle. Meg picked up the dark lantern and closed the shutters again and they stepped through the remains of the mirror once more while she told him of the rather disastrous meeting Isabelle Giry had had with the young man who, as it turned out, had been flirting the same way with a half a dozen of the dancers all at once. Erik's booming laugh resounded warmly across the icy lake well before she reached the end.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Well, I hope that wasn't too disappointing. I shall try to move this story along a bit here in the next chapter.  
  
AC85  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
I know Madame Giry is pretty harsh on Erik in this chapter - please understand that she is somewhat protective of her only daughter and only wants the best possible for her. Especially since Meg's taken to associating with someone who, to Isabelle's eyes, can only be considered a shady and rather dangerous character...  
  
Feedback! Feed me! 


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